


we dream together to survive

by arsonist



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Canon-Typical Violence, Coming Out, Derealization/Depersonalization, Dissociation, Drift Compatibility (Pacific Rim), Eventual Smut, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Getting Together, Ghost Drifting, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Transphobia, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Panic Attacks, Self-Esteem Issues, Sharing a Bed, Survivor Guilt, Trans Zuko (Avatar), Transphobia, Trauma, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, also he kinda got the short end of the stick plot-wise and i felt bad. sorry my man :(, btw ‘past jetko’ here means like. timeline-wise, but what else is new, i am going to create an au that is so self-indulgent, i love jet and he demanded more screen time and i couldn’t say no. love u jet xo, idiots to lovers, like a truckload of ‘em, sokka has piercings because i decided, there are multiple flashbacks (including a sexy one), they are both so stupid. so stupid, zuko and mai are trans mlm/wlw solidarity, zuko has a lingering emo phase because i wanted to project sorry in advance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:02:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 60,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29769027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arsonist/pseuds/arsonist
Summary: Zuko — a disgraced, closed off ex-pilot returning to action four years after a disastrous, fatal mission, in the hopes of redeeming himself; Sokka — a Jaeger Tech engineer who gave up piloting after his sister’s departure, resigning himself to something that just never felt good enough.When they turn out to be drift compatible, they both get the second chance they were looking for — a chance to prove themselves and help save the world.But first, they need to let each other in.
Relationships: Background Mai/Ty Lee, Past Jet/Zuko - Relationship, Past Sokka/Suki, Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), background Aang/Katara
Comments: 42
Kudos: 66
Collections: Zukka Big Bang





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> so. this monster is finally done. the beast has been slain. this a/n is kind of long, please bear with me.
> 
> first off, i want to thank my team for providing encouragement and helping me make this fic the best it could be. i had several moments where i doubted myself or wasn’t sure if what i was making was halfway decent and worth all the effort, and having their reassurance really made a difference. so thank you, to both my team’s betas [sintheeuhxo](https://sintheeuhxo.tumblr.com/) and [appadripdrip](https://appadripdrip.tumblr.com/), and to [disabledzuko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disabledzuko/pseuds/disabledzuko), our artist!!
> 
> when i signed up for the zukka big bang all the way back in september, i expected to write at most 12k — especially since i’d never written anything longer than 6k before, and never anything multi-chaptered — but the story had other plans. why i thought i could make this anything other than appropriately kaiju-sized is beyond me. never in my life did i expect to make something like this, and yet here we are ( _at the edge of our hope, at the end of our time_ , etc etc). never doubt yourselves, kids. this fic is a real labor of love (and stress. much stress), and i sincerely hope it can make someone smile as much as it did me when i was writing it in the wee hours of the night.
> 
> this story is also my love letter to pacific rim, in a way. it’s a movie and a universe that means a lot to me, and i feel like it probably comes across throughout the fic. i dove deep into the obscure lore for this, watched clips over and over to analyze tiny stuff in the background (shoutout to the [pacific rim wiki](https://pacificrim.fandom.com/wiki/) and to [theshatterdome](https://www.youtube.com/user/theSHATTERDOME) on yt for the endlessly useful reference material, truly the real mvps lmao), and now i’m full of useless pacrim trivia that i’ll never need again, but hey, it’s as close to canon compliant as i could make it. i really wanted it to feel seamless with the verse, and to do it justice, and i hope i’ve succeeded at least a little bit.
> 
> having seen the movie is not necessary, but strongly encouraged. i tried to keep it accessible to people who haven’t seen it, but at the same time, having the visuals and vibe in mind would probably be helpful as you read. also, it’s just a cool movie! (only the first one though. we don’t acknowledge upr*sing in this house.) i did add a glossary to the end notes, though, just in case certain terms or concepts are still unclear from the text and context.  
>  _however_ , if you do happen to be a pacrim nerd like me (hi there), you’re hopefully going to recognize some things and connect some dots here and there. no movie characters are mentioned at all, to avoid continuity issues and make room for the plot, but i did keep the basic timeline for the war.
> 
> on another, more important note. **re: trans zuko** — i am a trans man myself, and i pulled from my own experience when writing this. i filled the gaps in that experience with research. that said, being trans doesn’t make me infallible or immune to accidentally reproducing harmful stuff, so if any trans masc folks that read this have anything to point out to me, i would love to hear it. i used my own comfort and preference as a gauge to steer my portrayal of zuko, and i know that can be very subjective and personal.
> 
> warnings wise, i do not go in depth into physical dysphoria. however, zuko does have some negative thoughts about how others may perceive him and/or his body. i know many prefer to read stories that avoid these aspects altogether, but i personally find it validating and affirming when i see others write about it. again, i went with my own preference here, and found it very cathartic to write. (also, it’s zuko. angsting about stuff is kinda his deal.) the last thing i want, however, is to make anyone upset or triggered by these sections, so if you think this might not be your cup of tea, feel free to skip this story entirely.
> 
> in the end i wrote this for myself, to make myself feel seen, but i also very genuinely hope it can make someone else feel seen, and loved. very much loved. to any trans readers this may have: i love you, i see you, and you deserve happiness.
> 
> i think that’s everything lmao sorry for this extremely long-winded a/n. this fic has just been a journey for me, and i have way too much to say (and probably will for a while, until i get it all out of my system, oops). if you’ve stuck with me all the way through, thank you :’) overall i hope this is a fun, entertaining read, and i appreciate any comments you might be inclined to leave. happy apocalypse-cancelling!

> > > > > `KAIJU (怪獣, kaijū, Japanese) Giant Beast.`
>>>>> 
>>>>> `JAEGER (yā’gər, German) Hunter.`

* * *

> > _ Not so long ago, all nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Kaiju attacked. Only the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, with the help of the Jaeger Program, could stop them, and when the world needed them most, they rose to the occasion. My sister and I joined the Jaeger Academy to help defeat the extradimensional threat, seeing as we had a lot to learn before we were ready to save anyone. But I believe the Jaeger Program can save the world. _

* * *

Sokka Nukapiak is fifteen years old when Trespasser emerges from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and attacks San Francisco, leaving a trail of chaos, destruction and Kaiju Blue in its path. August 10th, 2013, now known as K-Day, abruptly changes the lives of every single human on Earth, whether directly — tragically — or indirectly. It goes down in history as the start of a decade-spanning war — a war that will define a generation.

When Sokka and Katara’s mother, Kya, is killed in a Kaiju attack a year after, it feels like whiplash. The extensive news coverage, the widespread panic, the confrontation with mortality, the upturning of known reality — none of it ever feels truly real until it happens to you, personally. It’s all Hakoda can do to try to keep his children sane and safe, while dealing with the grief himself.

By then, the PPDC is already established, rushing to put together a solution, a defense against the colossal alien creatures turning the Pacific coastlines into their personal playground. The Jaeger Program is born.

When the Jaeger Academy opens in Kodiak Island, so close to home, Hakoda joins, along with Bato. Their military experience works in their favor, and they turn out to be drift compatible. Ivory Victor, their Mark-1 Jaeger, steadily racks up her Kaiju kill count.

Sokka, seventeen, is  _ obsessed. _

He memorizes the specs of every Jaeger built, analyzes their design, their movement, their weapons. When he sees Ivory Victor on TV, he thinks,  _ that’s my dad in there. _ The pain of losing Kya is still there, a constant ache, a void in his heart that can never be refilled again; but he’s so  _ proud, _ and so fascinated, that he can almost ignore it.

Katara doesn’t share his enthusiasm. Instead, she feels rage. She fuels it into protesting, and kicking ass at the local gym. Things settle into a new, albeit strange normal, for a while.

Then, Yue — selfless Yue — is crushed to death, as payment for helping strangers exit a building under attack safely. The others make it; she doesn't. 

Sokka is devastated. They were never really together — only an almost, a maybe. But he cared about her, damn it, and it was just— unfair. Wrong. Yue was young, and kind, and had a bright future. But Sokka couldn’t protect her. Like he couldn’t protect his mother.

The only way he could protect anyone, and stop losing people he cared about, was to get in a Jaeger himself.

In 2016, Sokka and Katara join the Jaeger Academy.

* * *

Zuko Long is thirteen when he says out loud for the first time that he’s a boy. It’s not a recent realization, far from it; he’s been trying to put out that fire since he was six. The fear of adding one more item to the already long list of things that make him a disappointment is a cold, leaden weight in his stomach, dread solidified. He knows he has to keep it to himself. 

(The  _ real  _ first time he says it is a year earlier, to Mai. Mai goes in for a kiss, and Zuko panics; not because he doesn’t like Mai — he does — but it feels disingenuous, dishonorable, to not clear up the confusion.  _ I’m a boy, _ he says, frantic, and Mai’s breathing halts.  _ And I’m not one, _ she whispers, tentative. Zuko is stunned. Mai gets it;  _ she  _ gets it. They give each other watery smiles, and their mutual, misguided crushes on each other die in that moment, replaced by pure understanding. There’s no need for words after that; they simply hold hands for the rest of the day, content with the comfort of being each other’s anchor, the sole trusted keepers of each other’s truest selves.)

Puberty brings with it an urgency though, a necessity for change and affirmation, for relief from his dysphoria. Zuko wants hormones, he wants surgery, he wants people to call him  _ Zuko.  _ He  _ wants, _ so bad he can hardly breathe sometimes; so bad he lets himself hope, even believe he can have it.

To put it shortly, Ozai doesn’t take it well.

Later, when Iroh picks him up from the emergency room — a fresh bandage covering the left side of Zuko’s tear-streaked but stormy, stoic face — he looks at Zuko with pity in his eyes. Zuko doesn’t want pity. He doesn’t want anyone to look at him. He doesn’t want to want anything anymore.

Iroh takes him in, and Zuko moves with him to California. Things get better, gradually. Lu Ten is usually abroad, but when he’s home he treats Zuko like a brother. Zuko is grateful, he is, but it still feels like a failure, like admitting defeat. He can never hope to be who his father wishes he was, and for that he deserves all the shame, all of the guilt his body can manage to contain. And being here, an intruder in Iroh’s home, just underlines how much he doesn’t fit anywhere.

Little by little, Iroh helps him transition. When Zuko, hands fidgety and gaze averted, asks him to shave his head for him, Iroh happily complies, a soft smile on his face as he drags the clippers against Zuko’s scalp, humming to himself a song Zuko doesn’t recognize. Zuko can’t move or speak; he only watches as the long dark locks of hair fall to the floor, and it feels like a release.  _ Goodbye, ponytail. _ When they’re done, he runs his fingers against the soft, short stubble on his head.  _ Thank you, Uncle, _ he says, and Iroh simply pats him on the shoulder and says,  _ Not a problem, my nephew. You look very handsome. _

After that it’s doctor’s appointments, surgery consultations, injections and recovery, name change forms and wardrobe overhauls, and Iroh is there for him through it all. Zuko's debt to him only grows; he can never hope to repay it in full. He can only wonder what he’s done to deserve such unwavering support. He hasn’t earned this, not by a long shot.

By the time Zuko is sixteen, his body is not as inhospitable a vessel anymore. The changes are gradual, but it feels like more his own. His father is obligated to acknowledge him, if only to save face in the public eye. It’s not real support, not really; but, once more, Zuko allows himself to hope.

There’s still a chance his father will one day love him. There has to be  _ something  _ he can do, he just has to figure out what it is.

K-Day arrives that same year. The world changes drastically and vertiginously, priorities shift, and Ozai Corp adapts. Being a military technology and research megacorporation, they become a major influence with the PPDC when it is established in 2014. Ozai becomes invested in the success of the Jaeger Program — when earlier he expected both his children to join the military when they came of age, purely for the prestige it would give him and the company, he now sets his eyes on the Program. Having a Jaeger pilot, a hero and a celebrity, for a daughter would surely make him look even better. (That and the profits, of course.)

When Zuko sees him on TV saying that Azula will be the first in line to join the ranks of the brave Jaeger pilots, he finally knows how to fix this, how to win his father’s love back.

Zuko jumps at this chance to impress him.

Along with Iroh and Lu Ten, Zuko and Azula join the Jaeger Academy in 2015.


	2. as the water rises up, sun is sinking down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [‘dark blue’ by jack’s mannequin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEf3ykHVlbM)  
> content warning for alcohol mention/inebriation

Zuko meets Jet on his first day at the Jaeger Academy. Kodiak Island is full to the brim with aspiring pilots and officers, spilling out from the buildings and mingling as they wait for the inauguration speeches to begin. They’re the Academy’s first class — the test subjects, the vanguard.

All the eager cadet hopefuls file into the Academy’s auditorium to be told about how they’re the brave heroes that will save humanity, how they’re beacons of hope in a dark time. Zuko just feels hollow.

Zuko’s father is there — because of _course_ he is — to try and soak up as much of the spotlight as he can. Azula is with him, flanked by Mai and Ty Lee. He did promise she’d be the first in line.

Jet saunters into the auditorium late, in the middle of Ozai’s speech, and takes the only empty seat in the room. Right next to Zuko.

“Ugh, can you believe this guy?” he says quietly after something Ozai says, and Zuko isn’t sure if he’s talking to himself or to him. Ozai gives the cameras another soundbite, and Jet huffs in indignation, loudly. He does this two more times, before Zuko has enough.

“What’s your problem?” he says, trying to keep his voice low.

“My problem? What’s _his_ problem?” he asks, turning to Zuko and gesturing to Ozai with his head. “The guy’s a capitalist scumbag. He’s only here because the PPDC needs him.”

“I know, but,” Zuko says, tired, running a hand through his short cropped hair. “He’s also my father, so.”

Jet just gives a short chuckle, but when Zuko doesn’t say anything else, Jet turns to him again, bewildered.

“Wait, you’re kidding,” Jet says, raising his eyebrows at Zuko. “You’re Ozai Long’s son? I didn't even know he _had_ a son.”

Yeah, that’s not surprising. As far as his father is concerned, he _doesn’t,_ really — in more ways than one. “Well, he does, and he’s me.”

Someone in the audience shushes them harshly, and Zuko sinks a bit lower in his seat. Jet ignores it entirely.

“How come you’re not over there at the front with him, then? Your sister’s there.”

Zuko looks at Azula standing proud slightly to their father’s side — the picture of the perfect daughter.

“You’ll have to ask him that,” he says to Jet without looking at him. He, on the other hand, is looking at Zuko appraisingly.

“I'm Jet. Reyes,” he says, offering him a hand to shake. 

Zuko hesitates, and Jet doesn’t waste time. “What, can’t shake hands with the unwashed masses, rich boy?”

Zuko rolls his eyes, but takes his hand. Jet’s hand is calloused and warm.

“Zuko,” he tells him, “Long. But you already knew that. And don’t call me that.”

The speech ends then, and everyone is clapping. Everyone but Jet, who keeps his arms crossed.

Zuko doesn’t want to admit it, but it is kind of refreshing.

* * *

Zuko is exiting the auditorium building — Azula is still inside with Ozai, posing for the photo ops and giving interviews — when Jet catches up with him outside. 

“Hey,” he says, jogging up to him, “Zuko, was it? So, I think I figured it out. You’re the rebellious son, aren’t you? You like to act out. That’s why I didn't even know you existed,” he continues. Zuko just keeps walking. “What did you do, Long? Crash his Mercedes one too many times? Or was it a Porsche?

Zuko stops walking, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m going to ask you again,” he says. “What. Is your problem.”

“I don’t have a problem, I’m just trying to figure you out,” Jet says, like that’s a normal thing to say. “What I really don’t get is, if your old man’s not using you for publicity, then why are you here?” he asks, now standing in front of Zuko. “Did you get tired of the cushy rich boy life and decided to play hero for a bit or something?”

“I don't think it’s any of your business why I'm here. I’m not asking you why _you’re_ here.”

“I'm here because Trespasser took everything from me, and I want to see as many of these blue-blooded fuckers destroyed as possible. Pretty simple,” Jet says, shrugging easily as if he isn’t carrying several tons of trauma and grief on his shoulders — but his eyes are shadowed, and his voice is hard, betraying something angrier, something vengeful and barely contained.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says, and he means it. He’s lucky he hasn’t lost anyone to the war. 

“Yeah, everyone always is,” Jet says, bitter. “But enough about me. You’re the real puzzle here.”

Zuko sighs. Every drop of patience he’d gathered for Jet evaporates. “Don’t you have anyone else to bother? Why are you talking to _me?_ ” Zuko starts to walk again. Jet follows, walking backwards.

“Because you’re interesting, and I'm bored,” he replies casually, shrugging again. “Oh, I know!” he exclaims, snapping his fingers, “Maybe you’re here because you’re trying to redeem yourself, all prodigal-like. Like maybe if you become a pilot your rich daddy will finally lo—“

Zuko snaps. He charges at Jet, fist flying towards his face, but Jet yelps and reacts just in time, blocks his blow before it can make contact. Zuko tries again with the other hand, but Jet blocks that too, grabbing his arm. He's grinning wide, thick eyebrows high, surprised. 

“Whoa, whoa there,” he says, and he sounds a mix of impressed and amused. “On the first day? Damn, you really _are_ a rebel.”

“Get _off_ me,” Zuko snarls, pulling his arm free. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Okay, I don’t know anything,” he admits, hands raised in a placating gesture. Still smiling. Bastard. “But, uh, people are starting to stare, so maybe you should calm down if you don’t wanna get kicked out before you even get in.”

Zuko glances around, then glares at Jet, seething. Jet just laughs. His laugh reverberates through Zuko.

“You have issues, man,” he says, voice colored with laughter.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Oo-kay, edgelord,” Jet teases, raising his eyebrows again. “Let’s start over. I won't ask anything else.” Jet stretches out a hand again, but Zuko eyes it suspiciously.

“Why,” he says.

“Why what?” Jet replies, probably starting to think Zuko’s crazy.

“Why do you even want to talk to me? You obviously hate my father. And I just tried to punch you. Although I get the feeling that’s not uncommon for anyone interacting with you.”

“Like I said, you’re interesting. Beyond the pretty face, I mean.”

Wow, that’s actually pretty rude. And direct. People don’t usually mention his scar so bluntly. Because that’s what Jet meant, obviously — why else would he talk about Zuko’s face? 

“Ha-ha,” Zuko deadpans.

“Look,” Jet starts, and he seems to have dropped the irony for a bit. “I don’t know what’s up between you and that demon in there,” he says, pointing back to the auditorium building, “but you’re clearly not all buddy-buddy with him, and that tells me everything I need to know.”

“Which is?” Zuko asks, raising his one eyebrow.

“That you’re _not_ a demon,” Jet replies, looking Zuko in the eye.

Zuko holds his gaze. “You don’t know that.”

“I can’t know if you don’t let me.”

* * *

He doesn’t see Jet again so soon after that first day. Zuko half expected him to attach himself to his side like a particularly infuriating leech after their conversation, but he doesn’t. There are just too many cadets during the first months, too many people crowding the Academy’s halls. The crowd begins to thin after the first cuts, but Zuko is too focused on his training and studies to look for him. (And why would he want to, anyway? They aren’t exactly friends.)

The fact that Mai is around too is a helpful distraction, even if she’s usually attached to Azula. 

Jet and Zuko really only meet again in the Kwoon, when cadets are being tested against each other for compatibility. He spots Zuko across the room and winks, but doesn’t try to approach him again. He seems to also be focusing on his training, working hard to make the cut. To make it into a real Conn-Pod of a real Jaeger.

When, out of hundreds of possible matches, the algorithm pairs Zuko and Jet as compatible, Zuko doesn’t quite know how to feel. One the one hand, it’s Jet — someone he already kind of knows, has already talked to, and who already knows who he is, at least partly; on the other hand, it’s _Jet_ — the guy who seems to take personal enjoyment out of pushing his buttons, and who makes Zuko feel some type of way in his groin when he smirks at him.

Which is bad, _very_ bad.

It turns out that his opinion is irrelevant, because they fight incredibly well together — both moving quickly and aggressively, in an intense clash of wood and muscle.

They’re drift compatible. And soon to be copilots.

“Looks like it’s you and me, Long,” Jet says to him nonchalantly. He doesn’t ask him anything again, doesn’t try to pry. There’s no point, really — they’ll be in each other’s heads soon enough.

They develop a strange friendship, now being forced to spend more time together as part of crew bonding and trust-building exercises. They spar together, eat together, study tactics together. Zuko finds he doesn’t actually hate Jet’s company; their arguing turns to banter, tense silences turn comfortable. Jet seems to _get it,_ somehow, even without knowing much. He gets the combativeness, the deep, tar-like rage coating Zuko’s heart like a shield. He seems to look at Zuko and recognize him.

Like every pair matched in the Academy, they drift with each other for the first time in the Mock-Pod Simulator — a replica of a Jaeger’s Conn-Pod, meant to acclimate Rangers to the process, and help them learn their way around their partners’ minds. The training wheels before the real thing.

It’s an inherently invasive exercise, and it _should_ be a big deal. But, because Zuko’s present range of emotions only has two settings, anger and apathy, he doesn’t really feel nervous about it. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. _He_ doesn’t matter. All that matters is becoming a pilot. Becoming worthy.

His instincts of self-preservation have been malfunctioning for years now, and he can’t really find the energy to worry about how Jet will react to the flaming train wreck inside his brain; to all the ways he’s been found lacking; to the truth of his makeshift body. Still, he knows there’s a good chance he’ll react poorly, request a different partner. Or maybe worse.

Zuko would deserve worse.

But worse doesn’t come. They drift smoothly, the sharp edges of their brains slotting against each other like a jigsaw.

Zuko learns that Jet’s entire neighborhood was leveled by Trespasser on K-Day. There was nothing left. Jet decided the monsters needed to pay.

The fierce, blinding rage Jet feels for the Kaiju would have been overwhelming if Zuko weren’t also accustomed to being a vessel for anger, molten, boiling somewhere within him.

Jet, on the other hand, learns what he needs to fill the gaps in Zuko’s story, to put the pieces together. It all makes sense, finally.

He already hated Ozai, anyway.

* * *

After their first drift, Zuko stands outside alone, staring at the ocean and bracing for whatever fallout awaits him when Jet finds him. It’s supposedly nighttime, 9 PM, but it’s still bright out in the Alaska summer.

“Hey,” Jet says from behind Zuko, walking until he’s standing beside him.

“Hey,” Zuko replies quietly.

Jet doesn’t say anything else, just looks out at the water in front of them with his hands in his pockets. The silence is slowly driving Zuko insane. He'd rather anything else, a punch to the face, a derisive comment, _anything._ But Jet seems content to stand beside him, not talking at all.

Zuko looks at him, expecting, increasingly unnerved. Jet finally looks at him, serious and devoid of any of his usual sardonic humor.

He searches Zuko’s face for a moment before speaking.

“I’m going to do something,” he begins, calmly, but with a latent energy behind it. “Feel free to punch me if it’s unwelcome.”

That’s all the warning Zuko gets before Jet is leaning in and kissing him, one hand coming up to rest on the smooth side of his face. Zuko gasps against his lips, simultaneously freaking out and so, so desperate for any contact.

When Jet notices Zuko isn’t kissing back, he pulls away. Zuko is dumbstruck, staring at him wide-eyed.

“Okay, you’re not into it. Got it,” Jet says, playing it cool. “I thought, maybe…”

“I— Guh,” Zuko manages, all his blood rushing to his face, making him slightly dizzy.

“You okay there, Long?” Jet asks, raising an eyebrow. “It was just a kiss, you don’t have to get all worked up about it.”

“I’m— Why,” Zuko tries again, pathetically. “Just. Why.”

Jet shrugs. “I don’t know, there doesn’t have to be anything deep behind it. I’m hot, you’re hot, and we basically just saw a bunch of each other’s shit in the simulator, so I thought hey, why not,” he says, like the crazy person he is. “We can just forget about it if you want, I won't do it again.”

Suddenly Zuko feels very, very strongly against that.

“ _No,_ ” he blurts out urgently, kicking himself internally the entire time. “I... I’m into it. I just...” Zuko trails off, examining Jet’s handsome face nervously. “Are you sure? I mean, you saw that I’m…”

“Yeah, I did. Am I supposed to be bothered by it? Is that what this is about?” Jet says, eyes so much softer than Zuko expects. “Because I’m not. I honestly don’t care either way,” and then, “Seriously, as long as you don’t have a Kaiju in your pants, we’re golden.”

Zuko huffs, not knowing what to say. Thankfully, Jet doesn’t expect him to say anything.

“So,” he says, with a smirk that makes Zuko’s legs feel like jelly, “Should I try again?”

This time, when Jet kisses him, Zuko kisses back.

* * *

When Azula doesn’t make the cut to become a pilot — for being unable to drift with anyone, unable to trust — but _he does,_ Zuko thinks it should have felt good, felt like a victory; finally, something he was better at than her.

But it really, really doesn’t.

Instead it just feels like guilt, a bitter taste in his tongue when he looks at her stricken, disbelieving, furious face. She isn’t used to losing, and Zuko feels suspended, frozen, waiting for her to react in one of two directions: either an explosion, lashing out at the instructors that wronged her, or an implosion, crumbling inwards and drowning herself in her rage.

Both sound equally destructive and he feels that, somehow, this is his fault. It _isn’t,_ he knows that, but maybe if he wasn’t part of the equation, Azula wouldn’t feel like she lost. To him, of all people.

He’s always been less than her, in every way, and they were both used to that as a fact, a universal constant, a law that enforced itself. It feels... Unnatural, undeserved to him, and he knows it feels the same to her.

Zuko has always been the underdog.

Azula leaves the Academy like an arsonist burning a bridge. Zuko stays, finishes his training. 

(Ozai, apparently fond of encores, exiles Azula for daring to be fallible. He doesn’t bother to do it in person; he coldly kicks her out by video call, leaving her adrift and with no future. Not wanting to be left with no shiny tools to point to as a measure of success, he decides to acknowledge Zuko’s existence, at least publicly. Ozai Long had promised a pilot child, after all.)

Zuko and Jet get stationed in Hong Kong after graduation, piloting a Mark-2 Jaeger named Liberator Blue. Jet complains about the move, wishing to stay closer to home, but there’s nothing they can do.

It’s strange for Zuko, coming home. (Was it ever really home?) Iroh and Lu Ten are already there when they arrive, in charge of Lotus Conqueror. Mai and Ty Lee join them later, calling Razor Nimble theirs.

Things run smoothly, for a while. Liberator Blue racks up kills like it’s going for a record. Jet and Zuko settle into a pattern; fight Kaiju, hook up, spar, fight more Kaiju, hook up again, lather-rinse-repeat. It’s about all they have the emotional bandwidth to do, but hey, it works for them.

Zuko only really wishes that the approval he’d so desperately wanted from his father, that he’d worked so hard for, had provided any kind of satisfaction at all.

* * *

One trimester into his training in the Academy — after the general Officer training is over and the specialized tracks begin to diverge — Sokka starts sneaking into Jaeger Tech workshops. Whenever he has some free time or a gap in his schedule (which is not often), he picks a class at random and looks for a seat in the back, hoping nobody’s noticed his intrusion. He’s usually exhausted — pilot training is grueling and dominates almost every hour of his day — but he does his best to pay attention, absorb as much as possible about Jaegers and how they function, how they are built.

That’s how he meets Teo, a bright-eyed engineer who believes that, one day, drift technology might be used for other purposes, such as controlling wheelchairs and other assistive technology. Maybe sometime in the future, he says, when the war is over and putting energy into something else feels less like a criminal waste of precious time.

They all feel it; the tunnel vision, the narrowing of paths, the switch into survival mode. Save the world first, worry about everything else later.

“Don’t you think that maybe you’re on the wrong track?” Teo asks him one day, seeing Sokka yawn and stretch his arms as they leave a Weapons Systems class.

“No,” Sokka says with finality, checking his phone to make sure he’s not late for Mock-Pod training with Katara. Flunking out of the Program for tardiness would be really stupid. Nice, he has time. She’s probably already waiting for him near the Simulator, though. He should get going. “You know I just can’t resist all that math. The big, cool robots too, I guess,” he says, turning to Teo and saluting him before rushing away.

Time to focus on what he’s really here for.

* * *

Sokka sees Suki Sunazawa for the first time during combat training in the Academy. She absolutely dominates the Kwoon, demonstrating impeccable Jaeger Bushido — which makes her difficult to pair. And difficult to look away from, where Sokka is concerned.

He strikes up a conversation with her after training; fumbles a bit when asking her out, making a fool of himself, but she’s endlessly charmed, luckily.

Their relationship is easy-going, comfortable. Sokka learns a lot from Suki. They get to know each other without the shortcut of the drift; they’re both eventually matched with their respective copilots.

Suki is paired with Haru Kobayashi, another Japanese cadet, and Sokka matches with Katara, as they’d both hoped.

When they all graduate the Academy, each crew gets assigned to one of the Shatterdomes — the PPDC bases located around the Pacific Rim. Sokka and Suki are lucky enough to be both stationed in Anchorage, instead of being separated like they’d expected. Sokka knows himself well enough to guess that long distance just isn’t for him.

The Mark-3 Jaegers Emerald Battler and Aurora Huntress are completed by their crews, and take their places as protectors of the coast of Alaska and its surroundings.

* * *

Zuko and Jet’s bright piloting careers come to an abrupt and premature end in 2016.

They get deployed to stop Catgator, a category II Kaiju, from reaching the populated areas of Hong Kong. A simple enough mission, but deceptively so.

The universe’s sense of irony seems to be particularly twisted that day — it’s August 10th, the anniversary of K-Day, and the anniversary of the deaths of Jet's entire family, plus many friends and neighbors. Everyone he knew.

Zuko should have known. Jet has been on edge all day — jumpy, distracted. But when the Kaiju Alarm sounds, setting the well-oiled machine of the Hong Kong Shatterdome into motion, Jet smirks at him, the way he always does, ready for the drop. Zuko doesn’t question it.

He should have.

Catgator surprises everyone with its strength and lethality, and Liberator Blue struggles. Lotus Conqueror, a second Jaeger, gets airlifted in to aid them. Iroh’s old Jaeger, before he became Marshal — now piloted by his son Lu Ten, with Zhao as his copilot.

Catgator is defeated, but neither of Lotus’s pilots makes it out alive. A grisly spectacle of carnage that should have been prevented. An empty, pyrrhic victory.

(The image of Lotus Conqueror’s head exploding inside the creature’s maw is one Zuko knows he’ll never be able to forget.)

The PPDC launches an investigation regarding the unusually deadly mission, retrieving the CVR recordings of Liberator Blue’s Conn-Pod (Lotus Conqueror’s having been lost with its destruction) and LOCCENT mission control data to determine how to proceed.

They determine the following: Ranger Jet Reyes is to be dismissed from PPDC service effective immediately. Ranger Zuko Long and Marshal Iroh Long are to be suspended from active duty until further notice.

* * *

When Haru puts in a request for dismissal, wishing to move back home to care for his elderly father, Emerald Battler is left one pilot short. Suki gets assigned a new compatible copilot, a fresh graduate from the Academy — Toph Beifong is young, brash, scrappy and very eager to get her hands dirty.

The two of them hit it off right away; Suki doesn’t treat Toph like she’s helpless, and Toph doesn’t try to box Suki in. They both understand the need for the freedom to be themselves, and everything that entails.

Their respective combat techniques complement each other effortlessly. Emerald receives the necessary upgrades, with cutting-edge experimental tech integrating non-visual sensory receptors with spatial awareness systems and drift stimuli transference.

In short, it means Toph doesn’t need to see at all to pilot.

It’s brilliant, genuinely revolutionary technology. There is a slight learning curve for both of them, but they adapt. Finally, Toph is exactly where she’s supposed to be: inside a Jaeger, 250 feet tall and so powerful, invincible.

Emerald Battler 2.0 is one of a kind, and Suki and Toph’s partnership is solid and very successful. They become a force to be reckoned with.

* * *

Around the same time, Sokka and Suki come to the conclusion that their romantic relationship has run its course, but would both like to remain friends. They don’t need to drift to be on the same page about it.

“Really? You’re not upset?” she asks, worried that she might be breaking his heart.

“Nah, I’m okay. It was good while it lasted,” Sokka says, eyes sincere as he smiles at her.

“I just don’t want this to stop us from staying friends,” Suki adds, “I care about you a lot, Sokka.”

“Aw, I care about you too!” he says, hugging her tight and lifting her off the hangar bay’s floor. She hugs back, laughing slightly. “And of course we’ll stay friends, being friends with you is fucking awesome.”

Toph suddenly sniffles from the sidelines, startling them. “Wow,” she says, wiping non-existent tears. “That was so beautiful. You guys are so emotionally healthy and mature. Do you want to be my new parents?”

Suki laughs, a light and airy sound, while Sokka promises to look up adult adoption.

* * *

Zuko has never seen his uncle so broken.

They both feel responsible in different ways, but Zuko feels like he killed Lu Ten himself, with his bare hands. It’s difficult to even look at Iroh, the man who had saved his life and given him a home, a loving family. And what had he done to repay him? Murdered his son. His _real_ son.

Iroh must sense the direction Zuko’s thoughts are taking, because he pulls him close, holds him tightly when they have made their way to the kitchen of their old home in California, bags on the floor next to their feet.

“We both lost someone precious, Zuko. I lost a son, you lost a brother. It isn’t your fault.”

They cry together, and Zuko hugs his uncle tighter. How can he even say that? How can he not blame him for what happened, when he had been _right there,_ right in the middle of it? When he _knows_ that if he had only—

(Zuko’s father — who had, for the duration of Zuko’s career, vaguely pretended to care about him again, consider him a _son_ — decides that that particular piece of theatre had outlived its usefulness. If Zuko had hoped that becoming a pilot would earn him Ozai’s love, it stands to reason that that love would be withdrawn should he fail to keep up his end of the deal. For the second time in his life, Zuko gets discarded by the man that was supposed to love and care about him.)

Zuko tries to keep his head down. He works at the tea shop Iroh had built from the ground up, like he used to as a teenager, keeps up his training — just to do _something,_ to occupy his time. He watches the news, seeks out reports of Kaiju attacks, of victory or destruction. He tries therapy. He licks his wounds.

It isn’t much — certainly not enough — but it is a routine. Apparently that’s supposed to help, or something.

He doesn’t try to contact Jet.

They see each other for the last time when Jet is court-martialed. Zuko isn’t even called as a witness, even though he insists on being put on the stand, pleads and fights to the point of being a nuisance. He later learns his father had interfered to keep him from testifying, to keep him from being accused along with Jet in the first place. The unfairness of it feels corrosive and sickening inside Zuko’s chest. Jet stares at him across the courtroom, somber and hurt. His gaze is hard and sharp, the piercing blade of accusation, and Zuko holds it for as long as he can bear to.

They don’t meet again after that. Zuko knows he should reach out, apologize for the unforgivable, make sure he knows he tried. He looks him up online, drafts the same text message over and over, stares at Jet’s contact on his phone, thumb hovering over the ‘call’ icon — only to get cold feet every time, gripped by the icy hands of shame and guilt. There’s no way Jet wants anything to do with him anymore.

The thing about routine, though, is that it makes any breaks in it that much more jarring. As jarring as, say, Azula walking into the Jasmine Dragon one evening, drunk and sniffing for blood like a shark.

Anomalies stand out.

“Azula? What are you doing here?” Zuko asks her in Mandarin, alarmed. He’s just finished delivering tea to a table when she walks in, unsteady on her feet but still surprisingly composed. She stares him down condescendingly.

“What? Am I not allowed to check in with my _surviving_ family? There are _so few_ of us left, it seems. It’s like every other day another Long meets their end, it’s so tragic.”

She speaks as she walks closer to him. There’s something about her eyes, Zuko notices. It’s like she's frayed at the edges. She wouldn’t be here if she was doing okay.

“ _Azula,_ ” he warns her.

“You’re not looking too good, Zuzu,” she coos with fake sympathy. “You know, I knew you wouldn’t last as a pilot. You’re too weak. Too much like mother. They should have never let you in a Jaeger in the first place.”

Iroh must hear the commotion, because he emerges from the backroom to intervene.

“Azula. This is unbecoming of you,” he says, standing behind Zuko. “We are _all_ grieving, and I understand it must be difficult for you—”

“Difficult? Oh, _please,_ Uncle. I’m doing fantastic!” she exclaims, a manic grin on her face. “Especially now that _our dear Zuko_ here has been unceremoniously kicked to the curb by father. And for the second time, too! A real record breaker, he is. Is it permanent this time, I wonder?” she says, making a show of tapping her chin and looking up at the ceiling in thought. “Because it was for me. Looks like neither of us is the golden child now.”

It's the end of the day, and the few customers inside the shop are either staring or looking down at their orders uncomfortably, trying to ignore the owner and his family drama unfolding loudly in their presence.

“Look, I’m truly sorry that you never got to be a pilot,” Zuko snaps. “Really, I am. You can say whatever you want to me, I don’t care. But can we please do this outside? Uncle’s just lost his son, and this is his shop, he doesn’t need—”

“It’s alright, Zuko,” Uncle Iroh placates, placing a hand on Zuko’s shoulder and glaring at his niece. “Azula is clearly feeling too angry and insecure to realize she’s being disrespectful.”

Azula does _not_ like that. Her eyes flash to Iroh, sharp and menacing. “Oh, _really._ This whole _situation_ is your fault too, Uncle, isn’t it? Your responsibility,” she points out, voice dangerous and low. “A son and a nephew in your care, and you failed both of them. And, oh! That’s right! You were their Marshal too! Even _more_ your fault then. Congratulations. Lu Ten’s blood is on _your_ hands.”

“That’s it. _You’re out of line, Azula,_ ” Zuko says through gritted teeth, now furious. She has no fucking right. “You’re leaving, right now.”

“Or what? You’ll make me?” she asks, looking at him, amused. Her eyes shine from the alcohol. “I’d love to see you try, brother.”

Zuko grabs her forcefully by the arm, and drags her outside.

“Ooh, someone grew some balls! Oh, wait.”

_Goddamn_ it, Azula.

“I’m going to choose to ignore that, because you’re obviously drunk and not thinking straight,” he says, not letting her go so much as shoving her away from him. “But you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to kick us while we’re down just because you didn’t get what you wanted, or because our father treated you like shit. Guess what, I’ve been on the receiving end of that my entire life, and I'm not barging into people’s workplaces to rub their noses into their personal tragedies,” he rants, then pauses, looking at his sister in front of him. She seethes at him, while he glares back. “Leave us the fuck alone. Don’t come back here like this again.”

“Fine! You can keep your pathetic little tea shop and your pathetic little replacement father figure,” she slurs, gesturing, “but don’t fool yourself into thinking we’re that different. We’re both washouts now.” She turns to walk away, but not before throwing him a look over her shoulder. “You just have a higher body count.”

Azula leaves. Zuko is left standing in front of the shop, fists clenched as he stares at her retreating back. Iroh has to come out to retrieve him and snap him out of it.

That night, Zuko lies in bed thinking about her words.

_You just have a higher body count._

He can’t really argue with her there.

* * *

Katara’s leaving.

She breaks the news to Sokka one day, pulling him aside to one corner of the hangar bay for a modicum of privacy. Her expression is solemn, but determined. She’s made up her mind.

Sokka can’t believe this. He feels like the solid ground underneath him has suddenly dissolved into smoke, disorienting and impossible to hold on to.

“You’re leaving?” he says, voice rising. _Me,_ is what he means, you’re leaving _me._ “What do you mean you’re _leaving?_ ”

Katara looks around, arms crossed, checking if anyone is staring or eavesdropping. If she doesn’t want a scene she should be having this conversation with him somewhere else, he thinks. Their quarters, maybe.

( _Their._ Plural. As in, two of them. They’re a package deal, always have been.)

“You know it’s not a decision I’m making lightly,” she says, frowning at him. “I’ve given this a lot of thought. There are so many people out there that need help, Sokka. Have you _seen_ the Kaiju Blue contamination rates? The containment crews are mostly volunteers these days, and it’s just not enough. People are getting sick, seriously sick,” she appeals to him, while he stubbornly looks down at the floor, glaring. “Not to mention the effect on wildlife. Someone has to do something. _I_ have to do something.”

“You _are_ doing something, you’re fighting the actual cause of the Blue!” Sokka exclaims, gesturing at the hangar around them, at the Jaegers standing idle in their individual bays, crews and officers milling about around them. Doing their _jobs._

Katara presses a hand against her forehead in exasperation. “Sokka, you know as well as I do that Jaegers are responsible for at least sixty percent of spillage, no matter how many weapons we modify to cauterize. It’s just inevitable. You can’t kill something with blunt force without making it bleed,” she says, looking back up at him, brows drawn and blue eyes beseeching. Sokka has no chance, does he. “We don’t know how many Kaiju will still come through the Breach, how many we’ll have to kill yet. There are real, tangible consequences to the attacks, effects on _real_ people. People who don’t have Jaegers to protect them. People who need more help than they’re getting. A lot more.”

Sokka sighs loudly, frustrated. Trust Katara to have a whole speech prepared. A speech that makes _sense,_ worst of all. He shifts on his feet, uncomfortable; crosses his arms, uncrosses them. He doesn’t know what to say to make her stay. She can’t just leave, they’re— they’re _copilots._ Have been for two years. That has to mean something. Sokka frowns.

“So, what, you’re giving up?” he tries.

Katara looks at him patiently. “I’m not giving up. I'm redirecting my efforts. Changing course.”

“Sounds like giving up to me.” 

Sokka knows he’s being childish right now. He _knows_.

“See, _this_ is why I didn't want to tell you earlier. I _knew_ you were going to be like this. I have to do this, Sokka.”

_You don’t have to,_ he thinks bitterly. _You want to._ Even though that’s entirely unfair — Sokka understands deeply the hold that duty can have, the need to do what needs to be done, the pull of responsibility. It’s the whole fucking reason he’s here at all right now. He thought it was the same for her.

Maybe they aren’t all that compatible when it comes to that. At least not anymore.

Katara sighs at Sokka’s ruminating silence. “Listen, Sokka. I’m sorry, I am. I know it’s not ideal, and it’s not what you had in mind. I’m not doing this to hurt you, I’m just doing what I believe is right,” she says gently, resting a hand on his arm. He places his own hand over hers and looks up at her, wondering if she can feel how the strongest undercurrent of his emotions, beneath all the petulance and indignation, is fear. Fear of being alone.

“And dad okayed this?” he asks flatly.

“He did, Sokka. Actually, he encouraged it,” she answers, tone firm.

Great. Awesome. He’s been doubly betrayed, then. Sokka wonders if Bato is in on it too, because why not, at this point.

“This doesn’t mean you have to stop piloting altogether, though,” Katara says, going for a silver lining but landing squarely on a landmine. “The PPDC can easily find you another match, if you request it. They have your simulator scores and psych evaluation on file. You don’t need me to pilot.”

Yes. Yes, he kind of _does,_ actually.

“I don’t want them to find me someone else. _You’re_ my copilot, Katara,” he says, and it’s the truth — although only part of it. The other part is shrouded in insecurity and a deeply ingrained sense of inadequacy. His voice is quiet when he speaks. “You were always the better pilot, anyway, and you know it.”

Sokka considers himself a mediocre pilot at best. Katara’s a brilliant fighter. He can keep up, of course, and drifting with her has definitely balanced things in his favor. He has his strengths, like strategy and creativity, but Katara definitely carried their team, in his opinion. Without her, what chance does he have? And who would even want to be his copilot?

“I hate it when you say that,” Katara says, frowning at him. What does she want from him? It’s the truth. “It’s _not true._ I can think of several times when you were the one who got us out of a rough spot in a fight, or who guaranteed us a straightforward, minimally destructive kill. Remember when we took down Badgermole? Sokka, you’re a _brilliant_ pilot,” she says, and Sokka can’t look at her. “You’re just too stubborn for your own good.”

That last part she’s definitely right about. Sokka _is_ stubborn. 

He’s always kind of felt like a weight Katara has been carrying around, only really there because no one’s figured out how to make single-pilot Jaegers yet. If anyone should be quitting, it’s him, not her.

And so, he does.

After Katara leaves, Sokka also ‘redirects his efforts’. He doesn’t leave the PPDC — he can’t even imagine doing that. The responsibility he feels when it comes to the war is too great. Leaving the war effort entirely is unthinkable.

He almost wants to judge Katara for ditching the Corps, but the truth is she is still doing something that’s related to the Kaiju threat. She’s focusing on the human consequences of the invasions, the fallout, the indigo blue trail of disease and contamination the creatures leave in their wake. Sokka has to admit that that’s as much a necessary job as any other. It’s essential, in fact. He just wishes someone else was doing it instead of her.

No, he doesn’t leave entirely. Instead he reaches out to Teo, his J-Tech buddy from the Academy, to see if he can help him switch tracks; find him a low position in Engineering or something. The Chief of Jaeger Engineering turns out to be Teo’s father, and he takes an interest in Sokka when he can’t help but rave about a prototype he spots when he goes in for an interview. He even dares to make suggestions, because he has a big mouth that he can’t seem to be able to control when he gets excited about something. Fortunately, instead of landing him in trouble like it tends to, it lands him a job.

A safe, predictable job, away from the action and the danger. Sokka now works around Jaegers, instead of inside them.

It surprises Sokka how much he likes it. He’d completely forgotten what it was like to sit with a problem and stay with it until it was solved, the world around him fading away entirely; forgotten how much the numbers and angles and diagrams made sense in his brain, like they were its mother tongue. He’d forgotten, somehow, the aspirations he’d had before the war, before the complete one-eighty his life and everyone else’s had taken after K-Day.

Now, he remembers. Which lands him in a tricky spot, pulling on both sides of a tug-of-war. Can he afford to even consider what he wants, what he enjoys, while the world resists, struggles not to crumble, blow by radioactive blow?

* * *

Zuko’s had enough.

Enough of wallowing, enough of sitting around doing nothing, wasting time. Every time he sees a report of a Kaiju attack on the news, every time he looks at the small shrine Iroh has put together with Lu Ten’s picture, every time he sees his old dog tags hanging next to his mirror — every single time, he feels more certain that he’s in the wrong place, like a tool laying on a shelf, gathering dust. Still functional, but displaced from its purpose.

Zuko’s purpose is, and can only be, what his skillset is tailored for. Regardless of whether his father had wanted him to or not, Zuko was meant to be a pilot. A pilot in his own right, for his own reasons. It’s steadily become clearer to him the longer he’s been away, and the longer he’s allowed himself to let go of Ozai. He’s _meant_ to be in a Jaeger, using his body and mind for something bigger, more important than serving tea in his uncle’s shop.

The Catgator mission had put things into perspective for Zuko. He’d enlisted for the wrong reasons. Even Jet, with his personal revenge mission as a main motivator, understood the stakes, the magnitude of their roles much better than Zuko. He’d been so concerned with his quest for his father’s approval — a doomed endeavor, he now knows; and not because of him — that he had failed to see the big picture. The goal, the whole point of the Program — to prevent as much of the death the Kaiju wreak as possible. To save lives. To end the war, to _save the world._

(It’s a heavy undertaking, a burden bigger than any one person can carry. _But then again, that’s why there are two pilots,_ Zuko thinks dryly to himself.)

The irony of Zuko finally understanding this when he’s been benched for years now — three years and counting, an _eternity_ — is definitely not lost on him. He’s already wasted so much time. Could have helped so much, done so much.

He’s finally decided to do something about it. He screwed up his first go of it, but now he’s ready to make up for it. To redeem himself.

Unsurprisingly, Iroh is not on board.

“Zuko,” he begins, in that tone of voice he uses when Zuko’s done something frustrating, or worrying. “Are you sure going back now is a good idea? You have been away for a long time. You should think this through more carefully.”

“I’m tired of _thinking,_ Uncle. I need to _do something,_ ” Zuko replies, agitated, pacing in front of his uncle in their kitchen. “How can I stay here, living like this, pretending nothing is happening, when I could be out there, doing something useful, something that _matters?_ Inside a Jaeger is where I’m supposed to be, not here.”

Iroh’s face twists into a mask of anger and pain. “You are being foolish. Have you forgotten what happened last time you were in a Jaeger? How can you want to return when you know what that means?”

Zuko’s stomach sinks. He’s frozen in place, feeling like he’s been slapped. His uncle had reassured him multiple times that he didn’t blame him for his cousin’s death, but he’s always known that was impossible. He _had_ to, deep down. A failure that catastrophic, that close to home couldn’t just be forgotten and ignored like that. It would follow Zuko forever.

“I…” Zuko starts, hesitant. What can he even say? He swallows, tries again. “I know I screwed up. I know I can never fix it, never take it back. But if I go back, maybe I can use it as an opportunity to do things differently, to be _better._ I won’t let anything like that happen again, Uncle, I’m so sorr—”

He’s interrupted by Iroh’s arms wrapping around him, so tightly that it borders on desperate.

“I was hoping you would forget about piloting entirely,” he says against Zuko’s shoulder. His eyes are closed tightly as he clings to him. Zuko hesitantly hugs him back. “You are safe here, and not putting yourself directly in the path of these beasts. I have already lost one son, Zuko. I don’t want to lose another.”

Zuko’s eyes widen under his bangs, and he hugs his uncle tighter. Iroh is _worried_ about him. He’s not throwing his failure in his face in his grief, like Zuko thought. He doesn’t want him to go, because he doesn’t want him to risk his life. He wants to keep him _safe._ The realization fills Zuko’s ribcage up to the brim, and he begins to tear up despite himself, sniffling quietly.

“Uncle…” he says, voice watery, reluctantly breaking the hug so he can look at Iroh. “I don’t mean to make you worry. I can’t promise you nothing will happen to me if I go, but I know that this is something that I _have_ to do,” he insists, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’m treading water here, and I know you can see it too. But I can still fight, can still be good for _something._ ” Zuko looks his uncle in the eyes, determined. “I have to try.”

Iroh sighs, defeated. Zuko feels guilty, but doesn’t waver.

“Very well,” Iroh says, resting one hand on Zuko’s cheek affectionately. “I can tell you’re set on it, and nothing I say will change it. I shouldn’t have expected any different. Tomorrow I will reach out to my old contacts in different Shatterdomes, to see if any of them can accommodate an unpaired pilot,” he promises, smiling sadly at Zuko and patting his face.

Zuko raises his eyebrows in surprise. “You will? You’d do that?” 

Iroh just hums and turns away, walking to the stove to make some tea.

“Thank you, Uncle,” Zuko says. It doesn’t feel like nearly enough.

His uncle has his back to him when he speaks. “I’m already so proud of you, Zuko. You don’t need to do anything to earn it.”

* * *

` **2020, EARLY NOVEMBER — SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA** `

It’s late fall when Zuko takes an overnight bus trip to San Francisco. He sits curled up against the window, only vaguely watching the blurs of color and light move against the black of the night. He checks his phone every couple minutes, out of pure anxiety — half expecting to get a text from Jet canceling on him, telling him to shove it.

Zuko had — in an effort to remain coherent with his goal of doing better, of doing it right from now on — finally tried to contact his old copilot. He wanted to meet Jet face to face, see him again before going back, if only to provide both of them with some closure. If only to say goodbye.

The reality is, Zuko might very well die in action, now that his uncle had managed to find a Shatterdome that would take him. He’ll go back to being ambiguously undead, the way that every pilot is — alive enough to fight but technically potentially dead the moment they step into the Pod. And it doesn’t feel right to commit to that fate with something this important left unaddressed, hanging over them.

Zuko already regrets so much. Just taking this long to gather courage to look Jet in the eye again is already something he is deeply ashamed of; his friend deserved better. Or, ex-friend. He doesn’t think Jet really puts him in that category anymore. They haven’t spoken in years, after all.

Jet had, surprisingly, agreed to meet him. Zuko was stunned that he'd replied at all, to be honest. ‘ _meet me in sf on monday. golden gate park. the japanese tea garden. 9am’,_ he’d texted. Zuko didn’t argue. It seems only fair that he would go to Jet, instead of the other way around. Jet wants him to make the effort.

The next morning, Zuko makes his way into the Garden, at 9 AM sharp. Even though it’s November, and the plants aren’t in full bloom, it’s still beautiful. The California weather is generous enough that Zuko can get away with just a light jacket, and he tucks his hands in his pockets as he makes his way around one of the ponds, heading to the spot where they’d agreed to meet.

He stands near a bench, looking out into the blurred reflections on the water. He shifts from foot to foot anxiously, boots scuffing against the paved path, and checks his phone for the time. 9:10AM. Honestly, Zuko would deserve it if Jet flaked.

“Okay,” a voice says from behind him. Jet’s voice, as familiar as Zuko’s own face in the mirror. “You wanted to meet, here I am.”

Zuko turns around, and there he stands; brown eyes, denim jacket, coffee cup in his hand. The same, but so different. Zuko guesses he’s changed too.

“Hi to you too, Jet,” Zuko says, then hesitates. “You… How have you been?”

Jet looks at him, somewhere between unimpressed and irritated. “ _Seriously?_ ” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Is this what you called me here to say? Because, and this might surprise you, I have better things to do with my time.”

Zuko winces and looks down at the ground. “No, I know. I know you do, um.” He sighs, then looks up at Jet again. “Okay. Can we… Can we sit?”

Jet silently gestures for Zuko to lead the way, and they walk to the nearby bench, sitting down side by side. The space they leave between them seems like a canyon to Zuko, an abyss. Jet drinks his coffee while Zuko steels himself for the conversation. He must be silent for too long, because Jet sighs in frustration.

“Zuko—”

“Just— Hold on, okay,” Zuko interrupts him, trying to sound confident and certain. “I have stuff that I want to say.” He turns to look at Jet then. He needs him to know that he’s serious, that he means it. “I want to start by apologizing.”

Jet snorts, still facing forward, bringing his cup to his lips. “What for?”

“For everything— Everything that happened,” Zuko says. “For not having your back. For not standing up for you the way that I should have. It was my fault, too. More mine than yours, actually. I should’ve—” He stops, swallows. Changes direction. “I hate everything about how it played out. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t. I got the boot and you got, what? ‘Temporarily suspended from active duty’? Guess it really pays to be Ozai Long’s son,” Jet says pointedly, sneering.

Zuko winces again. Of course Jet knows exactly which wounds to poke at to hurt him most — where to insert the needle. “I tried, you know. I pushed so hard to get dismissed too, but he completely railroaded me. His money spoke louder. And you know he didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart.”

Jet finally turns to him, incensed. His eyes — that anger Zuko recognizes, knows so well — bore into Zuko’s, fulminating. “You— _Neither_ of us should have gotten dismissed! It was a fucking accident!”

“Two people _died,_ Jet,” Zuko reminds him, frowning. _Two pilots died. My cousin died._ “And more could have died too, if Lotus Conqueror hadn’t taken Catgator down with it.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that? I know that, _I was there too, Zuko!_ ” Jet exclaims, gesturing, running his free hand through his messy hair. “And they sure didn’t let me forget when they were kicking me out. I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”

“So do I,” Zuko mutters gravely.

Jet ignores him, looks out into the pond, shaking his head in indignation. “Being a Jaeger pilot was everything to me. You knew that. It was the only way I could— The only way I could get back at the _things_ that took my family, everyone I knew, from me,” he says, with the edge his voice always takes when he talks about the subject. “You have no idea what it was like, suddenly having nothing again, being so small and powerless to fight. I thought it was over, Zuko.”

Zuko feels like he’s swallowed stones. “I’m so sorry. I— I know I can never apologize enough. From your end it probably looked like—”

“You abandoned me? Threw me to the wolves? Forgot we were supposed to be partners? Yeah, it did look like that. Glad you acknowledge it,” Jet cuts at him, sarcastic and incisive.

“I didn’t mean to abandon you. You were my friend,” Zuko says earnestly. He hopes Jet knows he means it.

Jet lets out a tired, bitter laugh. “Who needs enemies, right?” They’re both silent for a moment, until Jet deflates, sighing. “Look, Z. I don’t really know what you’re looking for here. If it’s some kind of absolution, or… You obviously feel guilty and all, but — it’s been four years now. You could have reached out before, but you didn’t. Makes the apology seem kinda hollow.”

Zuko stares down at the ground. “I was too ashamed. I couldn’t… I didn’t know how to face you.” He looks back up at Jet, searching. “Would you have wanted to see me? If I’d tried?”

“Probably not. But the trying would’ve made a difference,” he replies, fiddling with the lid of his coffee cup.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says. There’s not much else he can say.

“Yeah. Me too,” Jet says sincerely, then turns to Zuko. “I’ve been mad at you for so long, but honestly, now I’m just… I don’t know. Tired, maybe. I moved on, I guess. Found something else that’s meaningful for me to do. I don’t even know why I agreed to meet you today. I guess a part of me missed you,” he admits, one corner of his mouth quirking up; the ghost of a smirk. “The stupid part, obviously.”

Zuko feels something squeeze in his chest. “I… I missed you too. I thought about you a lot.”

Jet just looks at him, squinting and shaking his head. “Zuko… You’re a mess of a person, you know that?”

Zuko huffs. He knows. “Yeah.”

“You seem… Different, somehow, though. You look good,” Jet says nonchalantly, taking a sip from his coffee.

“I’m… Thanks. You look good, too.” Zuko means this too. Jet looks better than he ever looked when they’d been friends. Healthier. Happier. Maybe being dismissed had actually done him good.

Jet doesn’t answer, just keeps looking at Zuko appraisingly. Zuko isn’t sure what exactly he’s seeing or looking for. It’s a bit unnerving.

Finally, he speaks. There’s something softer in his eyes now. “It was so much easier to stay mad at you when I couldn’t see you.”

“Sorry,” Zuko says automatically.

Jet turns away from him again, as if catching himself. “If I didn’t know you better I’d think you were banking on that. You’ve successfully necromanced the soft spot I have for you, so. Congratulations. And if you say ‘sorry’ again I’ll throw you in the fucking pond.”

“Fine,” Zuko concedes, because Jet knows him too well, even after all this time. He’d been about to say it again. “I, um. I have something for you,” he says, remembering the next item on his list. He digs around in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out an envelope.

“What?” Jet asks, looking at Zuko as he hands it to him, brows drawn.

“Open it.”

Jet opens it. There’s money inside.

“Zuko… What the hell is this?” he says, looking up at Zuko in outrage, like he’d just confessed to kicking kittens for fun. “Are you trying to pay me off? Buy my silence? Zuko, what the _fuck._ ”

Shit. He hadn’t meant to offend him.

“I— _Of course not._ This is a _gift._ A donation,” Zuko explains urgently, a little defensive. “For your neighborhood’s rebuilding project. I’ve... I’ve been following your work, since...” He trails off. Jet knows. “It’s really great, Jet. Really, genuinely impressive. I mean, the Kaiju War Orphans Network? That was you, too, your idea.”

“Uh, stalker much?” Jet says quietly, one eyebrow raised.

Zuko ignores him. “You’re doing some real good out there, and I wanted to help.”

Jet huffs. “What you really want is to atone. Kinda telling that you’re doing it with money.”

“Jet…”

“Thanks, though. For what you said,” he says, looking down at the envelope in his hands. “It’s something I really care about. I think we’re really making a difference. It’s… Obviously not the same. And it won’t— It won’t bring anyone back. But it’s a start.”

“I’m proud of you,” Zuko says. He means this too.

A short laugh escapes Jet. “Yeah.”

He thumbs through the money in the envelope with one hand, bringing his coffee to his lips with the other. “Okay,” Jet whistles. “ _Where_ did you get this?”

“I stole it from my father.”

Jet chokes, whipping his head around to look at Zuko. “You _what?_ ” A slow grin forms on his face.

Zuko gives him a look. “I’m joking,” he says. _I wish._ “I’ve been saving for a while.”

Jet settles back against the bench, still grinning. “Damn. That’s too bad, I liked your first answer better.”

“It was my first idea. You know, ‘be gay, do crime’, but Mai said I’d get caught in like two seconds. And then we’d both be in trouble, so. No crime.”

“Since when are you so afraid of getting in trouble?” Jet asks, smirking at Zuko.

Zuko rolls his eyes. “Since this money isn’t for me, or you, it’s for everyone you’re helping. Your community. Would you really want me to give you stolen money?”

“It’s called redistribution of wealth, Z, keep up. Besides, it would’ve been kind of a turn on, but,” he says, shrugging, “suit yourself.”

Zuko raises his one eyebrow. “Sorry that I wasn’t thinking about your hard-on for sticking it to the rich when I decided to do this legally.” Their banter is so easy to slip back into, even after so long. Zuko missed this. “Really though. I wanted to help. I didn’t want you to think that I...”

“Didn’t give a fuck? Yeah, I know you do. I know _you,_ ” Jet tells him. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been really fucking angry at you this entire time. Still am. I’ve thought about punching you a lot.”

“That’s fair,” Zuko says.

“But I know that you do care. Even if you have a weird, fucked up, Zuko way to show it,” Jet says, shaking the envelope. “And this is... This does help. I hate it, but it does. So I’m gonna think of it as reparations,” he concludes, a forced, sarcastic smile on his face as he pockets the envelope.

They sit there in silence for a moment — the same silence they’d shared so many times as partners, just existing next to each other in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, waiting for the Kaiju Alarm to sound and send them back into the fray. It’s an ominous silence; a silence heavy with the awareness of its own fragility, its own ending. A silence that forebodes.

Zuko’s next item on the list is foreboding in and of itself. Zuko isn’t sure how Jet will react to the news, but he knows he has to tell him regardless.

“I’m going back,” he says.

Jet doesn’t respond immediately. When he does, his voice is firm. “Good.”

“I thought you’d be angry.”

“I’d be angrier if you _didn’t,_ ” Jet says, looking out to the garden. “I can’t pilot anymore — which I still think is bullshit — but you still can. If you still have the chance to fight, wasting it would be unforgivable. This is not the kind of thing you can just sit out because you feel like it.” He pauses, plays with his coffee cup. “Maybe this is where I’m supposed to be, what I’m supposed to be doing. Maybe I'm doing more good this way. But you... You gotta take this second chance and—”

“Not screw it up?” Zuko interrupts.

Jet looks at him, dead serious. “Yeah. Don’t fuck this up, Long.”

“I won’t.”

“Good,” Jet says. He’s silent for a moment, thinking. Zuko watches his face. “I figured you would, eventually. Go back. Didn’t think it would take this long, though,” Jet tells him. He looks back at Zuko, raising an eyebrow. “Still trying to please the old man?”

Zuko frowns. “No. I— _No._ ”

_Not anymore,_ he thinks. _Never again._

Jet nods in understanding. “He drop you again, huh?”

“Like a steaming sack of Kaiju shit.”

Jet snorts. “That’s good. It means you’re free,” he says simply, but then turns to Zuko, sympathy in his eyes. “He was never really your dad, Z. You’re better off.”

“I know,” Zuko replies, taking a deep breath. “I know.”

“So when do you leave?” Jet asks, slipping one hand in his pocket. “ _Where_ are you going, anyway? Back to Hong Kong?”

“Alaska. My uncle knows the Marshal there.”

Jet raises an eyebrow at him. Zuko crosses his arms.

“Don’t, okay. I know. I figured if there’s one thing that’s worth using privilege and connections for, it’s this,” he says. “I leave in a couple weeks.”

Realization dawns slowly on Jet’s face. “This is really goodbye, then, huh,” he says, more to himself than to Zuko. “So this is why you’re doing this now. Reaching out to me.”

Zuko nods, eyes downcast. The space on the ground between his feet feels safest to focus on. “I didn’t want to leave things... How they were, between us. Before I left. You know, in case I… In case I die out there.”

“You planning on making me a war widower?”

“ _Jet,_ ” Zuko says, pained.

“I’m joking, Zuko, come on,” Jet says, looking at him sideways. “Can’t be a widower if we were never married. Though it sure does feel like we got divorced, somehow.”

“You can keep punishing me, it’s fine. I know I deserve it.”

Jet makes a face. “See, when you say that it kinda takes the fun out of punishing you.”

“I just didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. A real goodbye,” Zuko says.

The words hang in the air for a moment. Jet just looks at him, thinking.

Finally, he speaks. “Hey, Zuko.”

“Hm?”

“I’m going to do something,” he says. “Feel free to punch me if it’s unwelcome.”

Zuko turns to him, stunned. Jet holds his gaze for a moment, a serious expression on his face, suddenly less guarded than he’d been during their entire conversation. Zuko _knows_ what that phrase means. Jet knows Zuko knows. _Is Jet going to…?_

He doesn’t get to finish the thought, because Jet closes the distance between them in one smooth move, pressing a kiss to one corner of Zuko’s mouth, with one hand holding the unburned side of his face. It’s a straightforward kiss, close-lipped — direct and grounded in the way only Jet knows how to be. As quick as it begins, it ends, and Jet pulls away, putting his hand back in his pocket and looking ahead, back to the garden.

Zuko is frozen in place. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it again. His lips taste like coffee now. He looks at Jet’s profile as he drinks from his paper cup, illuminated by the late morning sun.

“What was that for?” Zuko says after a moment, when he finally finds his voice.

Jet finishes his coffee, throwing it in the trash bin next to their bench. He’s still not looking at Zuko. “This is probably the last time we’ll see each other. I figured I might as well get in a goodbye kiss, right? It’s the last chance I’ll get.”

“I didn’t realize you missed me that much.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Long. Seeing you just got me feeling nostalgic, is all.”

“You wanted to punch me in the face, now you want to kiss me?”

“Your mistake is thinking those are mutually exclusive,” Jet says with a shrug. “You’re just very punchable, but also very kissable.” He finally looks at Zuko. “Why are you acting like I've never wanted to kiss you before? You didn’t punch me, so I’m assuming it wasn’t unwanted.”

“I don’t know, I guess— I thought that I— _Why—_ ”

“You’re gonna have to finish your sentences, sweetheart, I’m not in your head anymore.”

(‘Sweetheart’ is what Jet would call him when they’d—)

Zuko swallows. “I guess I just assumed it was, I don’t know, a contained thing. Not something that would have happened if it weren’t for the circumstances. Not something you’d _want_ otherwise. We both needed comfort, I was there, so you’d just— Settled, I guess.” _Also, the part where you’re still rightfully mad at me._

“You’re telling me that all this time, you thought—” Jet cuts himself off and lets out an incredulous laugh. “ _Wow._ You thought I was just using you as a— what, a _human fleshlight,_ because I was lonely? Is that it? Holy _fuck,_ Zuko. You really think that’s something I'd do? Is that what _you_ were doing?”

“I— _No._ I know you wouldn’t. I _know._ I just— Why else would you—”

It occurs to Zuko for the first time that maybe what they had had meant more to Jet than he’d let on. More than it had meant to him, even. It’s a very bizarre, disconcerting notion. It doesn’t really compute for Zuko, honestly. He quickly pushes the thought aside, categorizes it under ‘not possible’ and ‘bordering on conspiracy theory’.

“Jesus christ. You’re—” Jet laughs again, disbelieving. “You sure know how to be stupid sometimes, Z. Goes to show that you can literally drift with someone and still have no clue what kind of bullshit they have in there,” he says, tapping Zuko’s forehead with his index finger. Zuko bats his hand away.

“You were my _friend,_ dickhead. I was attracted to you,” Jet continues. “Yeah, sure, we were both pretty fucked up back then and not in the right headspace for any kind of relationship, but... I didn't do anything I didn't want to,” he says, searching Zuko’s face. “...I hope you didn’t either.”

“Yeah, no, I... I wanted it. I just didn’t get why you did.”

(Maybe in a different lifetime, in a different universe, they could have been something else, something sweeter.)

Jet shakes his head. “Four years later and you still think you’re always unwanted. Ozai really did a number on you.”

“Four years later and you still think everyone wants to hear your opinion.” It’s a reflex, defensive, and Zuko instantly regrets it. Jet hasn’t said anything that’s not true.

Jet laughs and raises his hands, conceding. “Fine. It’s none of my business, anyway. You’re someone else’s problem now,” he says as he tucks his hands back in his pockets. “Just hope your new copilot can handle you.”

Zuko raises his eyebrow. “Why, because you could?”

Jet smirks at him, innuendo in expression form. “Oh, you _know_ I could.” 

Zuko feels his face heat up. He walked right into that one. “Asshole.”

“Takes one to drift with one,” Jet replies easily.

There’s a beat, during which Zuko deliberates. He doesn’t deliberate for long, though.

“...Fine. One goodbye kiss,” he blurts out, before he can back out. He’s still blushing. “A proper one, though. That didn’t count.”

Jet frowns at him, questioning. “Uh, are you serious? You don’t have to.”

“I am. You’re right, we’ll probably never see each other again, so...” he trails off, biting his lip. “If… If you’re still up for it.”

Jet’s eyes soften. “For old times sake.”

“For old times sake,” Zuko echoes.

Jet’s hand returns to the side of Zuko’s face, and they take a moment to look at each other, really look, for the last time. Finally, they lean in together — one last synchronized movement — lips meeting like they had so many times before. Open mouthed, but no further than that. It feels appropriately final, bittersweet. They’re leaving their past selves behind.

Jet pulls away first. He breathes against Zuko’s lips.

“Kill some Kaiju for me, will you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mr. jet reyes i have feelings for you
> 
> also, sad headcanon that didn’t make it into the fic: lu ten was the one who taught zuko how to shave when his facial hair started coming in :’)


	3. a sense of purpose and a sense of skill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [‘the pioneers’ by bloc party](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrpMIkaP2ss)  
> content warning for reclaimed use of the d-slur for lesbian
> 
> also, we got some beautiful art in this chapter! thenks disabledzuko for my lyfe :') <3

` **2020, PRESENT DAY — ANCHORAGE SHATTERDOME, ALASKA a.k.a. “THE ICEBOX”** `

The noisy Shatterdome buzzes with activity around Sokka and Teo as they perform routine checks on Emerald Battler’s systems. The enormous, bulky green, red and gold mech towers over them, dwarfs them, but by now it has become commonplace to be surrounded by things so much larger than them. At least when it comes to Jaegers, Sokka thinks, that enormity can be broken into familiar parts, understood. He _gets_ Jaegers. Kaiju are a different story entirely.

Sokka taps on his tablet’s screen, checking Emerald’s schematics, bobbing his head slightly to the song playing in his earbuds. An email notification pops up on the screen, and Sokka raises an eyebrow. He wonders if it’s the Mechanist again, with feedback on his latest designs. He taps the email icon, expecting a poorly punctuated but enthusiastic, mad-scientist-style, friendly message from his boss, but instead he finds, well, _not_ that. It’s from LOCCENT, and it looks very official.

> > ` **FROM:** LOCCENT _< loccent@ppdc.org>_ `
>> 
>> ` **TO:** RNGR Sokka Nukapiak _< snukapiak@ppdc.org>_ `
>> 
>> ` **SUBJECT:** URGENT - Drift Compatibility Trial `
>> 
>> ` Ranger Nukapiak, `
>> 
>> ` You have been selected for participation in the Drift Compatibility Trial scheduled for tomorrow morning. `
>> 
>> ` A returning pilot recently transferred to the Anchorage Shatterdome remains unpaired and is in need of a competent and compatible copilot. Your records as AURORA HUNTRESS’s pilot, as well as your Academy compatibility screenings have been taken into consideration and qualify you for this role. `
>> 
>> ` Please report to the Kwoon Combat Room at 0800 hours for briefing and physical trials. Attendance is mandatory. `
>> 
>> ` Signed, `
>> 
>> ` Officer Sangok `
>> 
>> ` LOCCENT - Anchorage Shatterdome`

Sokka frowns down at his tablet, pulling his earbuds from his ears and storing them in the pockets of his J-Tech jumpsuit. He squints, rereading the message again in disbelief. He hasn’t piloted in two years now. Katara’s departure from the PPDC had left him without a copilot, and had led him to transfer to Jaeger Tech officially and full time (much to the Mechanist’s satisfaction, after years of trying to talk him into it — _we could use your brain, Sokka,_ he’d say). So to say that this is out of left field would be a gross understatement.

“Hey Teo, do you know anything about this?” he says, eyes still glued to the screen as if it was showing him a particularly challenging puzzle.

Teo wheels closer, stopping by Sokka’s side, and reaches out for the tablet when Sokka offers it to him. “What? Oh, yeah, everyone’s been talking about it nonstop today,” he says simply, handing the tablet back.

Sokka frowns again. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“That’s because you’ve been buried in blueprints all day. Since last night, actually. Did you even get any sleep?”

“Yeah, uh, no. It’s fine though.” Sokka says distractedly, fiddling with his septum piercing and reading the email one more time. Maybe this time it would come off less bizarre. Less life-changing.

“You should get some rest, then, man. Gotta be in good shape for the Kwoon tomorrow morning,” Teo says, smiling. “But hey, congrats for making the list. I know that what you really wanted was to be a pilot again.” Sokka feels something tighten in his chest. He _did_ want that, didn’t he.

He chooses to focus on something other than that feeling.

“Who _is_ this ‘unpaired pilot’ anyway?” Sokka asks, frowning. “This is kind of out of nowhere, isn’t it? Super weird.”

Teo looks at him like he’s grown a second head. A Kaiju head, maybe. Now that’s a fun image.

“You don’t know? It’s Zuko Long.”

A flicker of recognition sparks in Sokka’s mind, but quickly dissipates. “Why do I recognize that name?”

“Because he’s Ozai Long’s son?” Teo explains, as if to say, ‘ _duh’_. He reaches for his own tablet and opens an online article that mentions Zuko, showing it to Sokka. It even has a picture of the guy, though the quality isn’t great.

“Ozai Long? As in, Ozai Corp, Ozai?”

“Yep. Zuko was a pilot for a few years, back when the Program had just started. One of the best. Until…”

Teo doesn’t finish the sentence, and Sokka can’t help being curious. “Until what?”

Teo cringes. “Well. Let’s just say it was a two-Jaeger drop, and only one crew came back. Pretty ugly. His copilot was dismissed and everything, it was all over the news.”

Realization dawns on Sokka’s face. The dots connect. _No way._

“Wait, no, I remember that! He was one of Liberator Blue’s pilots! _That’s_ the guy? That’s the guy I’m supposed to drift with?” he says, bewildered, until _another_ dot connects, a hanging thread. “Wait, why was only his copilot dismissed? Seems kinda shady, don’t you think? Do you think his rich dad bailed him out or something?”

“Well, I don’t know any details of what actually happened, or anything,” Teo says. “Maybe it wasn’t his fault the mission went south.”

Yeah, _no._ In Sokka’s humble and honest opinion, if one pilot is at fault, then both are at fault. When pilots drift, they become one — that’s the whole point. There’s just no way around it. Sokka eyes Zuko’s slightly blurry picture with suspicion.

“Nah, look at him. He looks arrogant as hell. I bet he was just as responsible as the other guy, but then he went straight to daddy to fix things for him. And now he’s coming back, after all this time, and for what? Does he think this is a hobby or something? God, what an asshole.”

A stupid asshole. With a stupid, honestly kinda handsome face. Wait no, _focus Sokka,_ it doesn’t matter that he’s handsome, like, at all. Putting others in harm’s way is bad enough; getting away with it through privilege alone? Much worse. Being hot doesn’t preclude that. And _fuck,_ he really is hot, too.

Sokka hates him.

When Teo speaks again, he looks as amused as he sounds. “Sokka, you don’t even know him. You literally haven’t even met him yet.”

“Yeah, okay, but I can tell. My instincts don’t lie. I can’t believe the algorithm matched us. There’s _no_ way we’re compatible.”

It’s irrational, Sokka knows — an unfair, precipitated judgment. He has enough self-awareness to feel a bit ridiculous for doubling down on his decision to immediately dislike Zuko without any proof of wrongdoing. And sure, part of it is an overcommitment to the bit, and also him exercising his god-given bisexual right to be dramatic — but, really, the truth is Zuko makes him _nervous._ The sudden, unexpected opportunity to pilot again makes him nervous. The possibility of drifting with someone who isn’t Katara makes him nervous. And nervous Sokka grasps at whatever he can to feel certainty again, to feel steady and sure and grounded. Sokka likes structure, he likes _knowing;_ so he pretends to know, with a hollow but convincing confidence, that Zuko is bad news. He pretends so hard that he even manages to convince himself, burying his anxiety somewhere deep where he can ignore it. It’s a lot easier to conclude that _Zuko Long = Bad, Q.E.D.,_ to dress it up as a concern for accountability, than allow himself that weakness.

Because that’s what it is, a weakness. And he doesn’t have the luxury for that.

“Whatever you say, man. Just show up tomorrow and you’ll find out,” Teo says, a smile in his voice, wheeling away to continue his work.

Oh, he’ll show up, alright — not that he has much of a choice in the matter. He can’t wait to size Zuko up in person, see if he really is that good of a fighter. He _can’t_ be, right? He hasn’t set foot in a Jaeger in years (although neither has Sokka, but that is irrelevant). He’s probably rusty as hell. Hey, maybe Sokka can even kick his ass a little bit. That’d be pretty satisfying. He’s overdue for an ego boost.

* * *

Sokka doesn’t go to sleep. Not immediately, at least. Instead he holes himself up in his quarters after his shift ends, and spends a good chunk of the night searching for any info he can find online about his potential future copilot.

He finds a couple news and magazine articles, mostly about Ozai in which he’s mentioned in passing, and Zuko’s Jaeger Pilot Wiki fanpage seems to be surprisingly sparse. (Which _is_ surprising. Pilot fans can be pretty zealous, and Sokka knows that translates into thoroughness and detailed stats. From experience. His own page is scarily thorough. Not that he checks it often or anything, who _does_ that anyway? _Definitely_ not Sokka).

The page lists his Jaeger, Liberator Blue (a Mark-2 with her own set of specs, but those Sokka already knows from memory, of course), his copilot (some guy named Jet Reyes, apparently — the one who’d been dismissed), preferred combat styles, Kaiju kill count (high), height, weight, and even his eye color for some reason — though Sokka bets whoever added that one bit of trivia to the page must be romanticizing the guy a bit. Who the hell even has _golden_ eyes?

There's also a very vague news piece about The Mission, but it’s mostly about the fallen Rangers and how they sacrificed their lives to save humanity, etcetera. No details about what exactly happened. Sokka frowns down at his PPDC-issue tablet. He wants to say it’s suspicious, but then again it would be odd for a random newspaper to have access to the exact play-by-play of a mission — so maybe not so much.

The few pictures he finds of Zuko are old, dated at least four years back, and he always looks very serious in them. Stoic, even. _Probably thinks he’s superior or something,_ Sokka thinks, rolling his eyes. The one thing that is impossible to ignore, though, is the huge, disfiguring scar across the left side of his face. Sokka wonders if it’s Kaiju related, or from something else. Either way, it must have hurt a ton. And, somehow, he still manages to be strikingly handsome, in a mysterious, regal, infuriating way. It’s not fair, when Sokka’s over here doing his best to work with what nature gave him and still not managing to be anywhere near as gorgeous as Mr. Edgy Model.

After that, there is a single video of him. It’s a post-battle interview, Zuko and Jet surrounded by rubble and debris that were once Hong Kong buildings, a Kaiju carcass blurry in the background. Blue and purple guts spill onto the daylit street as hazmat clean-up crews begin to work around the isolated area. Zuko doesn’t talk though, mostly broods to the left, his short cropped hair disheveled and still wearing his dark blue drivesuit. His copilot — Jet — takes over, grabbing the microphone and addressing the viewer instead of the reporter in a passionate call-to-action to _‘donate to your local Kaiju Disaster Relief Fund, or volunteer or something, people are homeless and sick and starving, for [bleep]’s sake’_. Sokka guesses that’s one way to get people to care — by yelling at them.

Sokka sighs and discards his tablet on the small desk pushed against the corner, littered with blueprints, tools, pieces of scrap metal and Jaeger leftovers — small projects he likes to work on in his spare time. He figures he might as well get some training done for the next day. If he’d been notified in advance, he would have set up a schedule to make sure he was in top shape for the trials, but whoever had been in charge of reaching out to the candidates had clearly decided to procrastinate on the task. Either way, it’s not like he’s _that_ out of shape, anyway, so it should be fine.

He moves towards the punching bag hanging on the opposite corner of the small room, but gets distracted when he sees the jian sword mounted on his wall. He picks it up, runs his fingers over the scabbard. It’s been a while since he’s handled it — probably since Katara left. The graduation gift from his favorite Academy instructor, Piandao, has been gathering dust on his wall ever since. No point in taking it down, for sparring or practice — he is in J-Tech now. His brain is his weapon.

Sokka tries a few blows with the sword, practices a few stances, but it’s hard to swordfight alone. Maybe he should have asked Suki for help.

He manages to train for an hour, willing his muscle memory to remember his standard combat training, before collapsing on his bunk with exhaustion. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and stares at the metal underside of Katara’s vacant bunk above him. Hopefully it will have been enough for the trial.

Putting aside his suspicions and immediate, totally unfounded distaste for the guy, Sokka does want to be a Ranger again. Being a Jaeger engineer is great, and intellectually fulfilling, and Teo and the Mechanist and the other J-Tech officers welcomed him warmly when he’d switched paths, but Sokka has always felt that that wasn’t good enough. He isn’t _doing_ enough. How is he supposed to protect the people he cares about, protect the world, from inside the Shatterdome, nose buried in calculations and plans and hands covered in grease? No, he should be _out there_ , fighting the enemy head on — like his dad did.

So Sokka will suck it up and do his best, and if that means being Zuko’s copilot, then he’ll just have to make it work. Who knows, maybe he’s actually wrong and Zuko is a nice guy after all, and they’ll be compatible and it will all turn out fine. He only hopes that Zuko will be willing to meet him halfway.

Lying there on his bed, Sokka is suddenly hyper aware of how quiet his quarters are — how empty — since Katara left. Empty bunk bed, empty quarters, empty headspace. It’s been a long while since he’d last shared a room with his sister, and it still feels really odd, alien, to be alone like that — they’d been sharing since they were kids. Sokka was used to having her in his space, her voice, her things. Having her in his head, too, had been an easy, almost natural step to take.

Now, two whole years after they parted, it still feels really strange to not have another consciousness routinely intermingled with his own. It feels— too empty, too quiet, even in his naturally loud brain. It feels like his mind is stuck in a sensory deprivation chamber, cut off from the input necessary to situate itself; all that’s left is white noise, and his own, lonely heartbeat.

_God,_ he misses Katara.

(The day she’d left, after saying her goodbyes to everyone she knew by name at the Shatterdome — and she knew almost everyone by name — she had silently collected her things from the shelves of their quarters, packing them neatly. Sokka had watched in a controlled panic, arms crossed in an effort to keep himself in one piece. At some point she’d turned to him and asked, _have you seen my black hair tie, Sokka?,_ and he’d shaken his head no, hiding his hands under his armpits. She’d frowned, but continued packing.

Today, and since then, Sokka wears the thin black band on his wrist, fiddles with it when he misses her. If Katara has ever suspected him of taking it, she’s never said anything; Sokka would deny it anyway.)

Sokka sighs again, and reaches out for the tablet he’d left on the desk earlier. The desk isn’t exactly close to the bed, but he makes it. He taps his way to the video call app, his fingers going on autopilot.

Sokka video calls Katara whenever he gets the chance; not just because he misses her, but especially because he _worries._ Although Katara is very much capable of taking care of herself, no amount of combat training will guarantee your safety when a 2500 ton Kaiju is coming your way. The only safe place during an attack is inside a shelter or a Jaeger — and sometimes not even that is enough.

If he can’t be there physically to protect her while she tries to save the world in her own way, he’ll at least make sure to be there in the only way he can.

When the call connects, his sister’s familiar face greets him on the screen. She looks exhausted, but smiles at him anyway.

“Hey, Sokka,” she greets him casually, but then her smile dims. “Everything okay? You look like you haven’t slept.”

Sokka rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and you look _so_ well rested. I’m _fine,_ Katara. Just been working a lot,” and then, because he wants to poke her a little bit, “How’s _Aang?_ ”

She startles at the question, face heating up immediately. _Bingo_. “He’s good! Really good, um…” she bites her lip, trailing off and looking to the side, embarrassed. “We’ve been making a lot of progress with the Kaiju Blue Cleanup Project I told you about! There’s still a lot to do, but I think we’re really making a difference.”

If she thinks Sokka didn’t notice that she just tried to change the subject, she’s very wrong. “That’s awesome, I’m glad things are working out, and that you two are out there, saving the environment and such, _together,_ ” he adds with a smirk, just to be annoying. It’s his prerogative as the older brother. “Tell him I said hi.”

Katara frowns. “It’s not just _us two,_ Sokka, you know that. There are a lot of people involved.”

“Sure,” he says, grinning obnoxiously. “But I only seem to hear about Aang — ‘Aang said this’, ‘Aang said that’—”

“Ugh, you’re _impossible,_ ” she huffs. “Did you call for any particular reason or did you just want to annoy me?”

Sokka blinks, swallows. “Right. I, uh, I have news, actually.”

“Oh?” Katara perks up, interested. Sokka rarely has any news (Toph’s latest flirtationship with a random female officer does _not_ count as news, according to her).

“So, uh,” he begins nervously, “I don’t know if Dad told you already, I hope not, ‘cause _I_ wanted to tell you, but— I, uh. I got selected for compatibility trials. So I might be piloting again soon.”

“What? Sokka, that’s great!” she says, a genuine smile blooming on her face. “I _told_ you you were good, and you could find someone compatible. You’re just stubborn.”

Sokka rolls his eyes again, looks away from the screen. “Yeah, I mean, it’s not guaranteed or anything, but,” he sighs, “Y’know, maybe. I have a shot, at least.”

“When are the trials?”

“Tomorrow, actually,” he says. “It was very short notice, very weird. The guy I got matched with has money, though, so that might be why it was pushed through so fast.”

“Oh, so you know who it is?”

“Yeah. It’s…” he pauses to chuckle. He hadn’t even thought about Katara’s reaction. “You’re gonna _hate_ this. You know Ozai Corp.”

“You mean one of the top companies responsible for carbon emissions?” she asks, face and voice hardening with anger. “Run by that dreadful parasite of a man that should have been guillotined already? _That_ Ozai Corp?”

“Yep. The same one. Parasite Man has a son, apparently. You know I don’t keep up with this stuff.”

“ _Zuko Long_ is coming back? I thought he’d stopped piloting for good,” she says, frowning. “I know you’ve already google-stalked him by now, what’s your impression? Is he anything like his father, by any chance? Because if he _is…_ ”

Sokka thinks back to the video of Zuko and Jet. To Zuko’s serious, stiff figure. “I’m… Honestly not sure what to think of him, yet. Looks a little arrogant, maybe? Hopefully he’s not a jerk.”

“I don’t know, I think he’d have to be, seeing as he’s compatible with you,” she plays, eyebrows raised and lips forming a small smirk.

“Ugh, _rude._ Whatever have I done to deserve this? You’re so _mean_ to me, Katara,” Sokka whines, resting the back of a hand against his forehead in a dramatic gesture. “Also, it’s _potentially_ compatible. That’s what the trial’s for, after all.”

“I know, I know,” she says quietly, then hesitates. “So, are you nervous?”

“Me? Nervous? Pfff, I’m not _nervous!_ Who said I was nervous?” Sokka says, as confidently as he can, and his voice doesn’t even break _once_. Nailed it.

Katara simply looks at him, thoroughly unimpressed. Damn her, she knows him too well.

Sokka deflates. “You know, sometimes I preferred when you _hadn’t_ been inside my head.”

“I _know_ you, Sokka, even without drifting with you. I know this means a lot to you. I think you’re gonna do great,” she reassures him, in the way only she can. Sokka knows she means it. “No, I _know_ you’re gonna do great.”

“You can’t actually _know_ that, you know,” he mutters, even though it’s pointless to argue. “But thanks. I think… I think I’m just as scared of _not_ being compatible with him as I am of _being_ compatible with him. If that makes sense,” Sokka says before he can stop himself, or even realize he means it. “But it’s whatever, I’ll just… Give it my best shot. If I don’t get selected—”

“You _will,_ ” she says firmly, trying to get him to look her in the eye. “Trust me, I have a good feeling about this.”

Sokka sighs, and hopes Katara’s right. Truth be told, she usually is — not that he’d ever admit that to her.

* * *

` **EARLIER THAT DAY — ANCHORAGE SHATTERDOME, ALASKA** `

It’s snowing when the PPDC helicopter drops Zuko and Iroh off at the Anchorage Shatterdome. It’s dark out, even though it’s technically daytime — around 8 AM. Zuko frowns and hugs his chest as he steps out of the helicopter, already bundled up in a black parka and gloves, the strap of his duffel bag crossing his chest. The thin covering of snow on the helipad crunches under his boots, and the wind from the helicopter blades tousles his hair, already getting wet from the falling snow. He pulls up his fur-lined hood. The Alaskan winter will take some getting used to.

Uncle Iroh doesn’t seem to mind, though.

“This is lovely, isn’t it? It’s been a while since I’ve seen snow,” he says, smiling at the pitch black sky, happy as a fucking clam. Zuko glares at him, and hugs himself tighter. _Yeah. Lovely. I’m pretty sure I’m freezing to death but it’s just great._

Before Zuko can open his mouth to complain, two men wearing heavy dark blue parkas approach them, walking in tandem. They’re both tall, imposing, but their friendly smiles soften their potentially intimidating auras. One of the men seems very happy to see Uncle.

“Marshal Long! Good to see you! I trust your trip was okay?” he asks as he shakes Iroh’s hand in a firm grip.

“Please, Hakoda, I’m not a Marshal anymore. Call me Iroh,” he says good-naturedly, with an equally strong handshake, before pulling Zuko closer, into the spotlight. “This is my nephew, Zuko.”

Hakoda turns to him, then, and Zuko swallows. He can tell the man is sizing him up, wondering if he’s worth the trouble. It only lasts for a second though, and the smile never leaves his face.

“It’s nice to meet you, Zuko. Your uncle had a lot to say about you,” Hakoda shakes his hand also, and Zuko does his best to appear confident (and ignore the embarrassment he feels when he wonders just what his uncle had said about him — whatever it had been, it has gotten them this far).

“Thank you, Marshal. And, um. Thank you for allowing me to come back. I hope I can be of good use here.”

“I’m sure you will be. We can always use more talented pilots,” the Marshal says, looking Zuko in the eye. He seems to mean it, and Zuko exhales, feeling like he’s passed his first test. “Now, you’re both turning blue, let’s go inside! Easy to forget just how cold it is to outsiders.”

When the large, heavy doors to the freight lift finally close, blocking the icy air and snow, Zuko finally relaxes, taking his hood off. It’s not exactly warm inside, but it’s not freezing anymore. The other man presses a button on the lift panel and they start their descent.

“I have other matters to attend to, but Bato here will show to your quarters,” Hakoda explains, placing a hand comfortably on Bato’s shoulder. Zuko observes them, how easily they move together. Almost in sync. They had clearly been copilots at some point.

“I can give you a bit of a tour too, so you don’t get lost. The Icebox isn’t the biggest Shatterdome, but it’s pretty easy to get turned around if you don’t know the place.”

“That would be very helpful, thank you, Bato,” Iroh says. “If you could point us to the mess hall as well, my nephew and I haven’t had breakfast yet.” Zuko rolls his eyes, although not without fondness. Some hot tea wouldn’t hurt, honestly.

* * *

Zuko is used to being stared at; people have been staring at him since he was born, for various different reasons. Most of the time, they stare at his scar — the gnarled, reddened patch of burnt skin over his left eye, cheek and ear. Zuko gets it; it’s unusual, isn’t pretty, and raises a series of questions. None of which he would like to volunteer the answers to to veritable strangers. He _gets_ it, but it’s still dehumanizing.

People have also stared at him because of who his father is, because of who his mother was, because he was a foreigner, because he didn’t pass, because he wore too much black. Then, because he was a star Jaeger pilot.

(Awe, envy, pity, curiosity, disgust, contempt, admiration.)

Now, as he and Uncle Iroh follow Bato into the expansive and brightly lit main hangar bay of the Anchorage Shatterdome, Zuko knows everyone’s eyes follow him for a different reason. J-Tech engineers and technicians, Jaeger crews, PPDC officers, all looking at him with varying degrees of discretion and blatancy. Their attention is heavy, like a target strapped to his back, and Zuko _knows_ he hears whispers, the sharp arrows. He feels paranoid, suffocated. He feels like crawling out of his skin, and hiding forever.

Do they know? Do they believe it was his fault? Do they judge him for leaving? Do they judge him for coming back out of the blue?

(He wouldn’t blame them.)

_Take a picture, it lasts longer,_ he’d tell them, if he weren’t so tongue-tied and anxious — and accompanied by two authority figures, one of whom is his uncle he owes so much to, and the other who probably has influence over his presence here, _as a favor._ Bato isn’t the Marshal of this Shatterdome, but Hakoda most likely values his input. Disrespecting him or causing a bad impression would be a bad move.

Zuko doesn’t expect the PPDC would turn away a willing and capable pilot — even one with a marred record — at this point in the war, especially since recently every Kaiju that has emerged from the Breach has been increasingly bigger and more powerful. But he’s not going to take any chances.

Zuko adjusts the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder as they tour the facility. Bato had been right when he’d said that the Anchorage Shatterdome wasn’t the biggest. Zuko was used to the one in Hong Kong — the first one established, and the largest one. It had seemed, however, much easier to navigate. Zuko thinks he might need a map of this place.

The installations are also noticeably newer, even if the industrial aesthetic is the same. The Hong Kong Shatterdome had been adapted and repurposed from a wave-powered generator facility, which meant that everything had felt worn and broken in from the beginning. The recycled nature of it was also plainly visible, with rooms converted to accommodate new, unintended purposes — the living quarters, for example. Zuko distinctly remembers his room having been adapted from part of a wave capture chamber.

The Anchorage Shatterdome, on the other hand, had been built from the ground up, with the precise goal of actually _being_ a Shatterdome. Which makes it all the more strange just how much of a maze it is. At least it means that the quarters are designed to be _quarters;_ having an attached bathroom, even a small one, would be a life-changing luxury. Zuko had not been looking forward to having to wait forever to use a communal shower alone again.

Pilots are also apparently supposed to share quarters in this Shatterdome, which is— _different,_ but Zuko guesses it makes logistical sense to keep crews together, to streamline deployment. It will take some adapting on his end, though. Thankfully, since he’s unpaired for the moment, he’s being given a temporary single room. Once his copilot is selected, he’ll be transferred, Bato tells him, as he guides him and Iroh down a wide corridor lined with metal doors.

“I’ll show you to yours first, Zuko, then I’ll take Marshal Long to his,” he says, walking ahead of them.

They stop in front of one of the doors, and while Bato unlocks it with his PPDC badge, Zuko tries to make a mental note of how they got here. It would be really embarrassing if he got lost trying to find this corridor again.

“Here you go,” Bato says, opening the door. “You can go ahead and get settled. The mini fridge is empty, of course, but you’re free to bring things from the mess hall back here.”

Zuko blinks, entering the room. _Mini fridge?_

Wow. There’s an actual kitchenette nestled to one side, opposite a door Zuko assumes leads to a bathroom. There’s a small stove and everything, plus a sink and a few cupboards. Who knew pilots stationed in Alaska were living in the lap of luxury this entire time.

After Iroh and Bato leave him alone to unpack, closing the heavy door with a clang, Zuko drops his bag on the bed and considers his new accommodations. The differences are helpful, actually; they make it feel more like starting anew and less like walking into a haunted house. But even with all the perks of being a newer Shatterdome, the harsh, brutalist aesthetic — the concrete, the straight lines, the steel framing and pipes — is still just as present in Alaska as it was in Hong Kong. Zuko doesn’t really mind — at least he has windows this time.

He peers out of one through the half closed blinds. The sun has finally started to rise over the ocean, watery and gray. It’s still snowing.

Zuko checks out the bathroom next. He flips on the light next to the door as he peeks inside. It’s small, but it has a shower, and a metal toilet and sink with a mirror above it, lit by a fluorescent tube light. It’s more than enough. He eyes himself in the mirror for a moment, before turning back to the sleeping area to finally unpack his things.

The Shatterdome isn’t the only thing that’s different. Zuko himself is different, he thinks as he unzips the bag on his bed. The Zuko who piloted Liberator Blue died in that last mission, severing the timeline of Zuko’s life into another before-and-after. He has too many of those, he realizes, as he organizes his books on one of the shelves.

He only hopes he’s different _enough_ — enough that he can do things right this time, and not fuck it all up.

Zuko pauses and stares at the remaining contents of his bag, contemplating whether it’s even worth it to transfer the clothes he’s brought to the locker-like drawers — after all, he’s supposed to switch rooms soon, right? He’s supposed to move in with his new copilot, whoever they turn out to be. The compatibility trials have been scheduled for the morning of the next day, which means he’ll be meeting them very soon. Zuko fiddles nervously with his nails, chipping off some of the black polish. 

Living with his uncle had suddenly allowed Zuko the freedom to express himself in a way that he had never been able to at home with Ozai. It was a strange feeling, being _allowed._ Unfortunately, the only things he had wanted to express at the time — that he knew _how_ to express — were teenage angst, anger at everything and nothing, and an all encompassing, ever persistent feeling of alienation and shame. Which, in his case, meant wearing a lot of black (like, _a lot_ ), and covering himself in as many spikes and studs as possible, an unmistakable Keep Away sign — lest anyone get the wrong idea that he wanted to be perceived at all. It was the next best thing to being actually invisible.

Oversized band t-shirts, baggy sweaters and hoodies soon became his uniform, in the hopes of hiding his tell-tale silhouette under the layers of clothing — not only for his own comfort, but a necessary survival tactic when it came to high school.

Slowly, he’d worked his way up to black nail polish and eyeliner, once the HRT had changed him enough that it felt comfortable, easy, instead of dysphoria inducing.

It’s been many years since then, but echoes of these aesthetic choices remained with Zuko like old habits hard to kick — from the nails to the boots to the subtle scars beneath his lower lips where his snakebite piercings used to be.

And the black — he’s still wearing a lot of black.

Zuko rummages through the layers and layers of variations of black clothing, deliberating, but then stops. Folded neatly beneath all the civilian clothes he’d brought in his bag is his old Ranger uniform — the dark blue sweater with the embroidered logo patches on the shoulders, the lighter blue cargo pants he’d always tucked into his boots. Zuko runs a hand against the worn knit fabric wistfully. It will feel strange to wear it again, to pick up where he left off. He’s here now, and he’s not backing out, but he can’t help the way his stomach twists when he thinks about it all — about getting in a Jaeger again, about drifting with someone new again.

He’s not sure what to expect from his future copilot. He’ll be going in completely blind into the trials, and will have to respond to whoever has been selected as a candidate. It’s very different from discovering you’re compatible with someone you already know, have sparred with, have spent time with. It’s jumping in headfirst instead of dipping a toe in — although, Zuko reasons, he’s never been one to dip his toe in, anyway. His impulsive nature makes it so that jumping into things headfirst without thinking is kind of his whole thing. A thing that has landed him in hot water multiple times, admittedly.

Whoever his new copilot turns out to be, Zuko knows he wants to do right by them. No matter how terrifying it will be for him to open up his mind again — to a complete stranger, no less — to let himself be seen to that degree, to trust them to not turn away and reject what they see. The things that Zuko himself has difficulty looking at for too long. Zuko will swallow his fear, and let himself be cracked open, exposed — because he has to. It’s the price to pay for doing what he’s meant to do, being where he’s meant to be. It may be steep, but it’s also fair, Zuko tells himself.

Much more important than his own misgivings, though, is making things work with his new partner. Whoever gets saddled with him will inadvertently find themselves shaking hands with a hurricane, and Zuko needs to make sure he doesn’t tear them both apart.

* * *

The first and only thing Sokka’s brain manages to conjure up when he sees Zuko in person for the first time — standing barefoot in the center of the Kwoon in a black tank top, dog tags hanging from his neck, waiting for the trials to begin — is the word _‘arms’_. Zuko twirls his bō staff, biceps flexing, and Sokka’s mind is pure static. He feels really, really, _disastrously_ bi.

Once he manages to recover from the hot-boy-induced brain fog, Sokka observes that real, present-time Zuko looks a little different from the pictures he saw. His hair is longer, shaggy and falling over his face in a way that should look unkempt but, _because it’s Zuko,_ just looks stylish, edgy and intentional. Sokka can’t imagine having hair in his face all the time, let alone _fighting_ with it in the way. He has to admit though, it does frame Zuko’s face nicely, even if it hides it a little bit. (Maybe that’s the point.)

Sokka also notices his nails — painted black, slightly chipped. Cool.

He doesn’t really have time to drool or contemplate Zuko’s personal grooming choices any more, though. He has to focus, and pay attention to Zuko’s technique with the other candidates. He’s lucky enough to be second to last, which allows him the opportunity to observe and study his moves before his turn — the kind of information and analysis that could give him an edge over the others, and over Zuko himself. After all, based on Zuko’s reputation as a skilled fighter, Sokka’s brain just might be his biggest asset to even their playing field. He doesn’t have to best Zuko, just match him, meet him on the same level.

The other candidates seem to be mostly newbies, recent graduates from the Academy, and Sokka thinks that it’s really not fair. Zuko’s absolutely going to _destroy_ them. They’re all about to witness a massacre, and Sokka almost can’t look when Zuko easily takes down the first cadet with a swift and graceful sweep of his foot that destabilizes him while he’s too distracted trying to counter his blows with the staff. The poor guy falls to the floor, eyes wide, and Zuko points his staff at him, as if daring him to get up.

_He’s already lost, man, have some mercy,_ Sokka thinks. 

“Four points to zero,” Jin calls from the back of the room where she stands next to Sokka’s dad, holding a clipboard. The match is over, and Zuko relaxes, lowering the bō. He offers the candidate a hand to stand up, and both men bow to each other. Okay, one point to the Not-Actually-A-Dick column, Sokka thinks.

The next match starts, and the second cadet joins Zuko in the middle of the room, taking her stance. The Marshal watches thoughtfully from the other side of the room, holding his chin. Standing to his other side is an elderly, plump man Sokka has never seen before. It’s safe to assume he’s here with Zuko. He holds his arms behind his back, and leans over to whisper something to Hakoda, who nods. Sokka really wishes he had super-hearing so he could hear what they’re talking about.

The second match doesn’t end as quickly as the first, which means Sokka actually has more to work with this time. Zuko moves quickly, and with certainty. He favors direct attacks, but also makes use of fancy footwork to evade his opponent. He seems to rely primarily on instinct, though — more heart than head. Which is fine, Sokka’s perfectly good with head. (Wait, no, that sounds kinda—)

“Four points to two,” Jin announces, breaking Sokka’s derailing train of thought. (Thank god.)

Zuko is fun to watch, though. Sokka is actually starting to actively root for him — which he reasons is basically the same as rooting for himself, since every poor bastard Zuko mercilessly defeats brings his own turn closer, and his chances higher. The downside is that now, after seeing him fight this well, Sokka's not really sure he’ll be able to keep up with him anymore. He's just not _that_ good.

(He’s not a bad fighter, obviously, or he wouldn’t have made it this far. Katara was always more skilled than him at combat, though. He was the brain, but she was always stronger. Sokka suspects he wouldn’t have made it this far without her, either.)

Well, he thinks, it is what it is. He'll just have to try harder, and think on his feet.

The next couple matches follow the same pattern, with Zuko wiping the floor with the rookie cadets. A few of the more experienced candidates manage to score a few points — Sokka pays close attention, brain working a mile a minute, looking for weaknesses. Every once in a while he looks across the room, at his father. Hakoda meets his eye, giving him a subtle smile and a nod, and Sokka releases a breath he didn’t realise he was holding.

Suddenly, it’s his turn.

Sokka takes a deep breath and steps forward to the center of the room to stand in front of Zuko, bare feet against the mat, resting his bō staff against his shoulders. He reminds himself that Zuko favors offense over defense. Sokka’s best bet is being unpredictable and using Zuko’s own strengths against him. He needs to outsmart him, not outfight him.

Zuko’s eyes widen slightly when he turns his attention to Sokka, a crack in the composed facade he’s held this entire time. Sokka isn’t sure if there’s something on his face, or if maybe Zuko’s just put two and two together and realized he’s the Marshal’s son. Or, maybe — _maybe_ Zuko’s checking him out too, like Sokka had done. A guy can dream.

(And yeah, nope, his eyes really _are_ gold, actually. Fuck.)

The look only lasts for an instant, though, as Zuko quickly schools his expression into one of concentration. He swings his staff once, then holds it firmly in front of him, pointing to Sokka. An invitation to begin.

Sokka takes his stance, twisting his staff a couple times, just for show ( _See, I can do that too_ ), then grips it steadily in preparation. He knows by now that Zuko will attack first.

Zuko leaps at him, bō poised to strike. He swings it at Sokka, but Sokka evades it easily, ducking and avoiding the blow. Zuko tries again, going for a sideways strike, but Sokka sidesteps him just in time, spinning away from him, staff held defensively. 

If there’s one thing Sokka’s good at, it’s evasive maneuvers. 

Zuko is visibly frustrated with this game. “You have to try to hit me too, you know,” he says with a scowl, speaking for the first time, and, wow. His voice is nothing like Sokka expected. It’s raspy, breathy, with a very unique texture to it. Sokka thinks he catches a slight lisp, too.

It’s a nice voice.

While Sokka is busy getting distracted by his voice, Zuko moves to attack. Sokka reflexively meets his blow this time, pulled back to the present. Zuko strikes again, and again, and Sokka counters him every time. They clash over and over, the sound of wood hitting wood echoing loudly in the Kwoon, until Zuko sees an opening, and locks their staves together. He spins Sokka with their combined staves, throwing him down hard onto the mat with a grunt.

_One-zero._

Sokka reels from the impact for a moment. Okay. He knew this wouldn’t be easy. He picks himself up using the bō staff for leverage, stretches his back. 

“Yeah, don’t worry, man. I'm planning to,” Sokka says, and Zuko narrows his eyes at him. 

They begin to slowly circle each other, gazes locked. Sokka attacks first this time. Zuko moves to defend, but Sokka feints, going for his feet. Zuko jumps, effortlessly avoiding the strike, and immediately goes on the offense again, rapid blows pressuring Sokka backwards. Sokka retreats almost to the edge of the mat, then grins at Zuko and rolls under his blows and right past him. He hits Zuko’s legs from behind, knocking him forwards and down onto the mat.

Zuko looks up at him from the floor, blinking, surprised.

_One-one._

Damn, that was satisfying.

“Told ya,” Sokka quips, standing up. He offers Zuko a hand, and he raises his eyebrow in suspicion, but takes it. Zuko’s hand is warm in his, and their grip on each other lingers for a fraction of a second longer than necessary. Or maybe Sokka had imagined that? Shit. He needs to concentrate.

They take their stances again, staring each other down, reading each other. Everything else in the room seems to disappear. It’s just Zuko and Sokka, and this physical dialogue, this test of chemistry they’re locked in.

Zuko spins his staff again, waiting. Sokka is feeling more confident after the last point, so he lunges, but Zuko defends with ease, spinning away to hit him from the other side. It catches Sokka off guard; he almost doesn't manage to turn in time to block. Zuko uses Sokka’s surprise to his advantage, delivering a series of powerful, quick blows. Sokka blocks them in succession, and then ducks to avoid a high swing of the staff. He uses his momentum as he rises and charges forward in Zuko’s direction, forcing him to defend. At the last minute, Zuko ducks. He manages to get a hit on Sokka’s side, wood making dull contact with muscle.

_Two-one._

Sokka exhales and looks up. Zuko is breathing hard, staring at him intensely — like he’s seeing something he doesn’t quite believe or understand. They’re both covered in a light sheen of sweat by now, and Sokka can feel his white tank top sticking to his skin.

“Zuko, remember your breathing,” the elderly man Sokka doesn’t know says from his spot next to Hakoda, and Zuko seems to gather himself somewhat, adjusting his grip on the staff.

They circle each other again, trying to anticipate the next move. Sokka stops, holding his staff against his hip as if it were a sword, just to see what Zuko will do — and, what do you know, he does the same, mirrors Sokka’s position, accepting his challenge.

_Okay, Zuko Long,_ Sokka thinks, raising an eyebrow with a small smile. _I see you._

Zuko charges at him, maintaining the sword-like grip. Sokka blocks it, parrying and pushing Zuko’s staff to the side to upset his balance, but Zuko rolls away before Sokka can strike from above. Sokka quickly turns around to defend as Zuko attacks again, fierce and unrelenting.

Just as he’s found a rhythm to his onslaught, Sokka dives to the floor to trap Zuko’s leg with his staff as he rolls, pulling Zuko with him. He lands on his back with a thump, with Sokka down one one knee in between his spread legs, Sokka’s staff hooked behind one of his knees. Zuko stares up at him, wide eyed and winded, hair strands clinging to the sweat on his forehead. He's still unconsciously gripping his staff tightly in one hand. Sokka looks down at him, breathing just as hard. His heart is hammering in his chest.

“Two points to two,” Jin’s voice says, breaking the spell.

Sokka lets Zuko’s leg free and stands up, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Zuko stands as well, still catching his breath, looking everywhere but Sokka. Sokka steps away to ready himself for the next round, but Zuko doesn’t. Instead he faces the Marshal across the room, resting his bō staff on the mat next to his feet. Sokka frowns in confusion.

“With all due respect, Marshal — I don’t think we need to continue, sir,” Zuko says politely.

_What?_ The words send a chill down Sokka’s spine, and he whips around to look at Zuko. He is facing the Marshal as he speaks, not looking at Sokka at all. Why are they stopping?

“I think I’ve found my copilot,” he says, finally glancing at Sokka briefly, before looking away and facing forward again.

_Oh. Oh, shit._

“Are you sure? You still have two points to go,” Hakoda says, raising an eyebrow. 

“I’m positive,” Zuko replies with certainty.

Zuko is satisfied with what he’s seen, even though they’re only halfway through the trial. It’s honestly baffling to Sokka — he’d have wanted to go all the way to the end, to do it properly, to be _sure_ — but, at the same time, he can’t deny the strong, nearly instant connection he’d felt as they moved together. It was like the whole atmosphere in the room changed as soon as they started fighting. If Zuko felt the same thing, the same synergy, the same dynamic gravitation Sokka did, then their compatibility is already proven. Which means that… It means that...

“Sokka?” his dad asks, turning to him.

“Ah, yeah,” he says, blinking as he’s pulled out of his reverie. “I felt it too — Sir,” he admits, looking at Zuko in profile. There’s a drop of sweat running down his neck, along the thin ball chain of his dog tags.

The Marshal silently turns to the elderly man beside him as if to ask for his input, and he nods to him, smiling.

“Very well,” Hakoda says, turning back to Sokka and Zuko. “Ranger Zuko Long, your new copilot has been selected. Ranger Sokka Nukapiak,” he says, turning to Sokka with a proud smile, eyes wrinkling, “well done.”

Sokka can’t help the warmth he feels spread in his chest at his father’s praise, and he suppresses a smile. “Thank you, sir,” he says with a nod.

“Welcome back, both of you.”

Sokka and Zuko turn to each other at the same time. Sokka gives him a small half-smile, but Zuko just looks at him, eyes roving over his face with a nervous intensity. He bows then, like he’d done with every other candidate he’d faced, and Sokka hastily bows too. When Sokka rises, he walks closer and offers Zuko a hand to shake.

Zuko, his _copilot._

“I’m Sokka. It’s nice to meet you, man,” he says. “Hope we can kick some ass together.”

Zuko takes his hand, grip firm. Sokka feels something electric spread under his skin from where their skin touches. “Yeah. Nice to meet you too, Sokka.”

Everyone who came to watch the trials is starting to disperse, and Zuko walks away to talk to the man Sokka had guessed had come with him. Sokka scans the small crowd and spots Toph on one corner, chatting up a now unoccupied Jin with a smirk on her face. And, oh boy — Jin is giggling and blushing. Sokka rolls his eyes. Toph won’t rest until she’s flirted with every non-straight girl in the Icebox. She uses her butch powers for evil, Sokka thinks as he walks in their direction.

“Toph, hey! I didn't see you before,” he interrupts, smiling. 

Toph exhales in frustration, turning her head towards his voice. “Kinda busy here, Snoozles.”

“It’s okay,” Jin says, smiling shyly at Toph. “We can talk more later. Bye, Toph. Sokka,” she nods to him as she leaves, looking back over her shoulder. _What the hell is her secret,_ Sokka thinks.

“You should put strap-block on your resume,” Toph deadpans.

“My bad,” he replies insincerely, bringing a hand to his chest. “Did you come just to flirt, or to actually watch the trials?”

“Yeah, I just _had_ to see it with my own eyes.”

Sokka winces. How does he still forget? “...Right. Sorry. You know what I meant.”

“Of course I came,” she says. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Sokka is almost touched by the implication that she came to support him. Almost, because she says it with such a wicked grin, one that suggests she knows something he doesn’t — which is not at all an uncommon expression for her, to be fair — and tells Sokka to approach with caution.

“Toph?” Zuko’s voice says suddenly from behind Sokka. “Is that you? It’s Zuko.”

Sokka turns as Zuko approaches them, a towel draped around his shoulders.

“Wait, you guys know each other?” Sokka asks, brows high in surprise.

“Yeah we do, we practically grew up together!” Toph replies, still grinning. She smacks Zuko with her cane. “And _you!_ Just dropped off the face of the earth like it’s nothing, came back and didn’t even say a word! Don’t think you’re getting away with that so easily, huh.”

She drops the grin then, growing quieter, more serious. Sokka can’t remember ever seeing her like this. “I was actually worried, jerkface,” she tells Zuko, who looks guiltily down at the floor. She turns her head towards Sokka. “Sokka, is he missing any limbs?”

Sokka looks him over. You know, just to be sure. “Uh, no. They’re all there.”

“See, you’re all in one piece, so you made me worry for nothing. Not cool, Sparky.”

Sokka can’t believe the odds. Toph knows Zuko, and clearly cares about him — enough to be upset about not hearing from him. Enough to have given him a _nickname,_ even. Toph has an uncanny ability to sense when someone isn’t being truthful — she likes to call it her Built-In Bullshit Detector, and she’d used it on Sokka a couple times (it had been, quite honestly, terrifying). So, if Zuko is Toph-Approved, then that is a good sign, right?

Sokka is quickly running out of excuses to arbitrarily dislike Zuko, which is for the best, really. If they’re supposed to pilot a giant robot together, being on good terms with each other is kind of a must. Building a good rapport with Zuko, building trust, is in Sokka’s best interests, if he really wants to make this work.

“I... Honestly didn’t even think anyone would miss me. Sorry, Toph,” Zuko says softly, chastised, scratching the back of his neck.

Toph rolls her eyes beneath her overgrown bangs. “Of course you didn’t. I accept your apology,” she says, “if — and only if — you let me fight you later. You and me, one on one. I’ll kick your ass, and then we’ll be even. It’ll be like old times!”

Zuko’s stiff, guilty posture suddenly melts with relief, and he smiles brightly at her. He even laughs a little — he _laughs_ — and while it’s subtle, a chuckle at most, it’s so surprising that Sokka just stares.

“Deal,” Zuko says, still smiling warmly at Toph, and it’s disarming how much it transforms his face, how it makes him look _young,_ as young as he actually is. Sokka might have just met the guy, but until now the only expression he’s seen Zuko make, even in pictures, has been guarded, serious — and now, in person and up close, maybe a little sad. Sokka had originally interpreted it as arrogance, but hey, he can admit it when he’s wrong.

Zuko looks like someone who’s been through _something,_ and came out a little broken on the other side. Smiles like this one are probably rare.

He must notice Sokka staring because he shifts his gaze from Toph to him, and immediately drops the smile, looking away and schooling his face again into that good old stony expression. Sokka flushes, caught, and clears his throat, doing his best to ignore the bizarre wave of disappointment that washes over him.

(He did always have a thing for people who could kick his ass.)

“So! You guys should catch up!” he says nervously, a little louder than necessary. He begins to walk backwards to the exit. “I’m gonna, uh, gonna go see about— our Jaeger. The one we’re gonna be, uh— yeah. See ya,” he finishes awkwardly, throwing them double finger guns.

Sokka manages to catch a glimpse of Zuko frowning at him before he hightails out of the Kwoon, cringing in embarrassment. _Wow, that was painful. What a great first impression to be making on your new copilot, you dumbass._

Sokka’s first impression of Zuko — his first actual, real life impression — on the other hand? Pretty okay, actually. He’s definitely skilled, and turns out they really are compatible, after all. Like, _very_ compatible. (Sokka tries his best not to replay his last point in his mind, Zuko’s face looking up at him when he’d thrown him flat on his back... That’s dangerous territory.)

The failed mission is still poorly explained, but Sokka is hoping that maybe Teo is right after all, and it hadn’t been Zuko’s fault. Piloting with someone reckless, someone who puts others in danger is a real risk, but would Sokka’s own father put him in a Conn-Pod with Zuko if he believed him to be that much of a liability? He trusts his dad’s judgment, so, logically, he should be able to trust Zuko.

In any case, best case scenario, they get along, drift well, and get to kick a ton of Kaiju ass together.

Sokka’s general nervousness about drifting aside, the one thing he worries could become an issue at some point is his undeniable attraction to Zuko. There’s just no way around it — Sokka thinks he’s hot. And hot people have the tendency to turn Sokka from a decently competent adult into a total mess. It might be fun to be in the vicinity of a cute guy on a regular basis, but Sokka isn’t exactly known for being subtle — Katara always said he has no poker face. Zuko might not respond well to that.

Sokka will just have to hope that his attraction won’t be too evident when they drift, or things could get awkward real fast.

* * *

Zuko frowns in confusion at the retreating back of his newly-selected copilot. _Okay, then,_ he thinks. He’d been staring at Zuko in a way that he couldn’t quite read, which was weird, and then he just left, looking really uncomfortable.

Zuko had been so sure of their compatibility during the fight that he hadn’t even felt the need to finish it. He still remembers the tension, the connection — the way they’d adapted to each other’s fighting styles, the way he’d felt swept into something _different,_ something theirs, something that had been absent in his fights with all of the other candidates — but maybe he’d gotten ahead of himself. Hopefully he hasn’t made a mistake in picking Sokka.

The Kwoon is practically empty by now, and Toph and Zuko begin to make their way to the exit.

“Hey,” Zuko says to her, tapping the back of her hand with the back of his. It’s been several years since he’s guided her, but he thinks he still remembers how.

She smiles at him, folding up her cane, and he relaxes his arm so she can grab it. She goes for his elbow, then frowns when she feels it’s too high.

“Why did you have to get tall? It’s so inconvenient,” she complains, sliding her hand down to high on his forearm as they walk out into the corridor.

“You’re the one who stayed tiny,” he says. “People usually grow when they age, Toph.”

“I put all my height points into my other stats, because I’m a genius,” she replies, grinning, “Now I’m short _and_ unbeatable.”

Zuko chuckles. He’d really missed Toph.

“I didn’t expect to see you here. I didn’t even know you’d become a pilot,” he admits, looking at her curiously. “How did you get your parents to let you enlist, anyway?”

“Oh, I didn’t,” she says casually. “I just kinda, sorta ran away from home and didn’t tell them where I was going. They found out later though, but I was already a cadet by then.”

Zuko raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Wow. How did they take it?”

“Hah, not well. They totally freaked out, wanted me to come home immediately, you know how they are,” she explains, making a face. “I said no. Told them I was staying, and that I never felt more like myself than when I was in a Jaeger. They couldn’t really do much about it anymore, since I’m an adult. Even if they like to pretend I’m not one.”

Toph’s issues with her parents are the exact opposite of Zuko’s, and yet yield similar results that he recognizes — the estrangement, the restriction, the pressure to be someone else. Toph has always dealt with it so much better than he ever could, and he admires her for that. “Sounds rough.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “It’s okay. I still call them from time to time, so they don’t worry too much. I just have to live my life, you know?” she says, then grins at him, wide and shark-like. “Besides, could you really imagine me just living with the knowledge that there are giant robots that you can pilot and punch giant monsters with, and _not_ trying to get in on that? ‘Cause I can’t.”

“You do love punching things,” Zuko concedes.

“I sure do.”

They walk in silence for a bit, until Toph speaks up.

“I heard what happened to your cousin, and then your copilot,” she says, voice uncharacteristically serious. “Real messy stuff.”

Zuko huffs. “That’s a nice way to put it.”

“That’s me, famously known for being _nice,_ ” Toph says, smirking in his direction. She soon drops the smirk though, and squeezes his forearm. “I’m glad you’re okay, Sparky.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly, a twist in his chest. “I’m glad you’re okay, too.”

“And now that we’re stationed together,” she says pointedly, “you won’t be able to ghost me anymore. Dickhead.”

Zuko does his best to swallow down the taste of guilt in the back of his throat. “I don’t know, this place is so hard to navigate that I’m pretty sure I could still hide from you.”

“Nah, I’d find you, real easy,” she replies, smirk back on her face. “I’d just have to follow the smell of angst and gay desperation.”

“ _Wow._ Thanks, Toph. I feel truly seen,” Zuko says drily, because _ouch_. He’d forgotten how savage Toph can be.

“That _is_ my specialty, yeah,” she says, a very fake innocent smile on her face.

Zuko definitely knows what corridor they’re on, and how to get from here to the mess hall. She’d never let him live it down if he got them both turned around while guiding her. They turn a corner and, yeah, okay, the mess hall is that way. He’s not lost.

They pass by other PPDC personnel on their way, officers and cadets in uniform, and Zuko’s thoughts turn back to the trials — to Sokka. Toph had been talking to him when he approached her, so they must know each other. Maybe she can provide him with some insight, let him know what to expect from him, since they’ll be working so close together from now on.

“So,” he starts, “You already know this Sokka guy? My new copilot?”

“Oh yeah, we’re friends. He’s cool, you’re gonna like him,” she replies easily. “Just try to not like him _too_ much,” she adds, her tone changing to something wicked and teasing. Zuko can _hear_ the smirk in her voice.

He feels his face heat up immediately, and he scowls. “Ugh, Toph.”

She shrugs, amused. “I’m just saying, with your track record...”

“I’m not _that_ easy,” Zuko defends, embarrassed.

“Sure, keep telling yourself that,” Toph says lightly. “But either way, I mean it. You’ll make a good team. Sokka’s a great guy, even if he is a total nerd. You know I’m a huge dyke, but if I wasn’t, he’d be the one I’d go for.”

Zuko frowns. “Now it just sounds like you’re _trying_ to get me interested.”

“Oh, so you _are_ interested,” she says, her grin growing impossibly wide and mischievous.

Zuko groans and covers his face with his free hand in frustration and embarrassment. His cheeks are still burning. “Ugh, this is impossible. I’m— I’m done with this conversation.”

Toph just laughs beside him, gleeful in his distress. He drops her off at the mess hall, making sure she can get around okay ( _“Zuko, I’ve been here for way longer than you. I’ll be fine.”_ ) and heads to his quarters to take a much-needed shower. He’s still smelling of sweat from the trials.

Truthfully, Zuko would love to be able to say that Toph is completely off-base — to say that he hadn’t basically had a mini religious experience when Sokka had stood in front of him. He’d thankfully managed to catch himself before being too obvious, but he had definitely _looked._

He’d looked at the man in front of him — at his handsome features, at his striking blue eyes, the dusting of freckles over his nose, the septum horseshoe piercing under it. At his toned arms exposed by his white tank top, at the tattoo on his right bicep, a geometric pattern (maybe tribal? Zuko wouldn’t know) wrapping around it like a band.

(It was obviously relevant and important to notice Sokka’s body, because one should always try to assess their opponent’s strengths before a fight. Zuko’s _not_ rationalizing, shut up.)

So, yeah. Toph does have a point. Zuko definitely finds Sokka attractive. Regrettably. Sokka is attractive, and they’re drift compatible, and now they’re going to be working together as copilots. Which means that Zuko just might have to become at least seventy percent less gay overnight if he doesn’t want things to go sideways. He doesn’t know Sokka well enough yet to be able to predict how he’d react to discovering his brand new partner had been checking him out like this when they join their brains together.

Luckily for Zuko, he’s got plenty of experience with self-repression.

(Sokka has a really nice ass too — like, _really_ nice — which is a clear sign that Zuko was put on this earth exclusively to suffer. It feels like a cruel joke that all of Zuko’s copilots have been hot guys. He’s only had two, but it still feels like a weird, messed up coincidence, purposefully designed to torture him.)

Okay, so Sokka’s handsome. Big deal. Zuko can be professional. ( _You mean like you were with Jet? That kind of ‘professional’?_ a voice in his head whispers, but he ignores it.) What he thinks or wants or feels is a moot point, anyway. Zuko just needs to remind himself of what actually matters, what he’s actually here to do. The way he and Sokka had clicked so seamlessly during their fight is what Zuko should be focusing on, taking it as a hopeful indication that they’ll make a solid team. That they’ll work well together — do good together.

Toph had painted a very positive picture of Sokka, implying they’d get along without much trouble, too. Zuko knows he’s not the easiest person, but he also knows that the neural bridge is made much stronger by a comfortable, spontaneous bond. Maybe by friendship, even, although Zuko is not holding his breath.

He really just wants it to work. He needs to make it work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and they were drift compatible  
>  _(oh my god they were drift compatible)_
> 
> toph is a butch icon and i would die for her


	4. i search your profile for a translation, i study the conversation like a map

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [‘overlap’ by ani difranco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghoq37ykENk)
> 
> strap in because this one is a long’un, folks  
> this is also a chapter i like a lot, hopefully you’ll like it too <3

When Sokka tells the Mechanist the news, his old boss doesn’t bother to hide his disappointment. Sokka knows what he thinks; that a brain like his is wasted inside a Jaeger, when he could do so much without putting himself in harm’s way. He'd told him so, when he’d taken Sokka under his wing. (Sokka, respectfully, disagrees.)

He wishes Sokka good luck either way, but not without reminding him of what he’s accomplished in Jaeger Tech. _“All the more reason for us to get that big project of yours finished soon, isn’t it?”_ he says with a wink, and Sokka chuckles, looking down and scratching his jaw. It does feel good to have his work acknowledged.

Sokka says goodbye to him and Teo, and to the other J-Tech engineers he’d worked close to for the past couple years. _This is it,_ he thinks, _out of Jaeger Tech and into the Jaeger._ A mixture of excitement and nerves swirls in his gut. He got the opportunity he wanted. Time to make it count.

* * *

Zuko is making his way to the mess hall for lunch when he runs into Sokka in one of the corridors. Admittedly, he’d gotten a bit turned around somewhere along the way — which is very frustrating, because he had managed to find his way from there to his quarters just fine earlier. Apparently remembering the way in the opposite direction is more than he can handle.

Sokka spots him when he turns a corner, trying to discreetly read the stenciled numbers on the concrete wall to figure out where he is. He must look pathetically lost, even through trying to disguise it, because Sokka approaches him hesitantly.

“Hey, man,” he says, walking in his direction. “You, uh, you need help getting somewhere? I’m assuming you’re heading for the mess, which, I am too, so. If you want we can go together?” he phrases it like a question, scratching the back of his neck, as if he’s still unsure of how to navigate talking to Zuko. They’re not used to each other yet; it’ll take them some time to get there.

“I was going in the wrong direction, wasn’t I,” Zuko says flatly, annoyed at himself. Sokka must be thinking he’s an idiot.

Sokka chuckles lightly, but without judgment. “Uh, yeah, kinda. Don’t worry, though, you’ll find your way around eventually. C’mon,” he says, indicating with his head the direction he’d been walking before, “I’ll take you there. We’re actually not that far away.”

He starts walking, easy paced, and Zuko follows. “Thanks. And sorry. I feel really stupid.”

“Nah, don’t sweat it. Whoever designed this place was _definitely_ not thinking with their left brain. That, or they were a big Escher fan.”

Zuko huffs. “Or they read ‘House of Leaves’ one too many times,” he mutters, hands tucked in his pockets as they walk.

“What?” Sokka asks, turning to him.

“Uh, nothing. I just— nothing,” Zuko replies awkwardly, cringing internally. _Can you please learn how to act human,_ he thinks. _You need this guy to like you. Or at least think you’re normal._

Sokka just furrows his brows in confusion. “Okay,” he says. “We’re here, by the way. Mess hall’s through there.” He gestures with his head again as they make their way to the wide entryway leading to the already busy mess.

“Right. Thank you. I owe you one,” Zuko says as he stops just before the archway, assuming Sokka will leave him to his own devices now.

Sokka frowns at him. “Yeah, cool, but— I’m gonna call it in right now if you don’t mind,” he says, placing a hand on Zuko’s shoulder and directing him inside. Zuko feels the weight and warmth of Sokka’s hand acutely through the sweater of his uniform. “You’re gonna join us for lunch, dude. You kinda seem like the loner type — no offense — but we’re a team now, so. And you’re new here, I’m not just gonna ditch you. You should sit with me— With us.”

“Oh, uh. Okay,” Zuko responds, at a loss. He guesses it does make sense for crews to implicitly sit together. “Who’s us?”

“Oh, just Toph and her copilot, Suki. Plus a few folks from Emerald’s crew that sit at the same table but, that’s who I meant by us.”

They move together through the noisy swarm of officers and technicians and engineers and scientists that are gathered in the hall for lunch. A few people notice Zuko’s presence, and elbow and whisper to each other. He takes a deep, steadying breath. Hopefully Sokka won’t be too bothered by the stares they’re going to receive.

They get in line and fill up their steel trays — Zuko looks down at the food dubiously, but says nothing — and then head back to the main area to sit. Zuko scans the well-lit, large, crowded room, holding his tray with both hands. Most tables are full, people in all sorts of uniforms eating and talking and laughing and— sneaking looks at him. Great.

Nothing like a Shatterdome mess hall to make you feel like you’re back in high school. Zuko feels like a teenager again — the new kid in school, the outsider.

It's different this time, though. He's not eating lunch alone in a bathroom cubicle anymore — nor is he sharing a cigarette with Jet outside, avoiding the crowd. This time there’s Sokka, corralling him to an already occupied table in the corner of the room, one hand firmly on Zuko’s shoulder, guiding (which, yes, Zuko is painfully hyperaware of, back ramrod straight ever since Sokka put it there). People are still staring at Zuko, nothing new, but Sokka — _Sokka_ — meets their stares head on with a clearly fake smile, disarming the curious onlookers until they look away, uncomfortable.

Zuko is torn between feeling weak and lame for inspiring that protection in the first place, impressed, and so grateful he wants to cry. _My knight in shining armor,_ he thinks sarcastically to himself, as they wade through the busy mess hall.

(And hey, maybe he doesn’t entirely _hate_ having a hot guy come to his rescue, like they’re in a cliche movie, or something — maybe he wants to pretend, just for a little bit, that that script has room for him in it. Sue him.)

“Just keep walking,” Sokka says to him quietly.

They finally reach their destination, stopping before a table where Toph is sitting, occupying two seats by putting her feet up. She leans over the table, propped up on one elbow as she talks to the woman sitting across from her, who looks up at their arrival. Her chin-length brown hair is partially pulled up in a bun on the back of her head, and she’s wearing a striking amount of eyeliner.

“Ladies, meet Zuko,” Sokka says, walking over to sit next to Toph’s partner, leaving Zuko to sit across from him, next to Toph. “He’s gonna be my copilot. Zuko, you already know Toph. Suki here is her copilot, and reigning queen of this Shatterdome. Democratically elected, of course.”

“Welcome to the cool kids table, Zuko,” Suki says, smiling amicably at him.

_See,_ Zuko thinks. _High school._

“Oh, sorry. Sokka and I must be in the wrong place, then,” he says drily, feels his mouth move before he can stop himself. _Great idea,_ he thinks, _insulting your new copilot on the first day._ Zuko will be lucky if he doesn’t screw this up before it even begins.

Toph cackles, though, her head thrown back and a hand holding her stomach. Zuko suppresses a smile.

“Hey! Not fair, man,” Sokka protests with a pout. “You’re supposed to be my partner. I'm _plenty_ cool.”

“You were a Robotics Club kid, Sokka. You’ve never been cool in your life,” Suki says, sympathetically.

“Zuko here took one look at you and _knew,_ ” Toph says, grinning wide. “Nerd recognizes nerd.”

“Oh, I see how it is. I have no allies here,” Sokka says with exaggerated affront as he stands. “I guess I have no choice but to leave and be _extremely cool_ at a different table.”

Toph boos loudly, and Suki pulls him back down by his sweater, rolling her eyes with an amused smile. “Oh my god, sit down. Eat your veggies.”

Sokka sits. “Yes, ma’am.”

Suki looks at him, shaking her head fondly. She turns to Zuko, then, gesturing to Sokka with her thumb. “Can you believe I actually dated this dork in the Academy?”

“That’s because she has excellent taste,” Sokka says through a mouthful of food. Charming.

“ _I_ still can’t believe that happened,” Toph says. “My money’s still on Suki having had a brain tumor back then.”

“I'll have you know I was an awesome boyfriend, okay? We just decided we were better as friends,” he explains, then flashes Suki a cheeky grin. “Besides, Suki wanted to explore her sapphic side which I think is totally valid.”

Toph snorts beside Zuko, while Suki elbows Sokka in the side.

“Ow!”

“Anyway,” Suki diverts, turning to Zuko while Sokka rubs where she’d attacked him. “How are you finding Anchorage so far?” she asks, shifting the focus to him.

Zuko blinks. “Oh, um. I haven’t really seen much of it yet, but...” He trails off, looking over Sokka’s shoulder when he notices a group of people still staring at him.

Sokka turns around to see what he’s looking at, and scowls. “God, they’re still staring? Nosy assholes.”

“Ignore them, Sparky. People stared at me a lot too when I first got here,” Toph tells him. “I couldn’t see it but I could definitely feel it. They’ll get bored eventually.”

Sokka looks at him sympathetically, brows drawn. “I’m really sorry, man. People are dicks sometimes.”

“Yeah. It’s fine,” Zuko replies uncomfortably, the odd flutter in his chest he feels when Sokka looks at him like that warring with the anxious cold in the pit of his stomach from all the staring.

“You were talking about your impression so far,” Suki reminds him kindly, offering a distraction.

“Uh, it’s nice? It’s... Different,” Zuko says, stilted. He’s trying to be polite; aside from the superior quarters and the fact that Toph is also stationed in Alaska, Zuko hasn’t found much to like so far.

Toph won’t stand for it, obviously. “He means it’s cold and the food’s bad,” she translates, blunt as ever.

It startles a laugh from Sokka, and Zuko feels his face tingle with a blush, scandalized. 

“I— That’s not—”

“Don’t worry, dude, the rations do suck,” Sokka says, still amused. “You didn’t have rationing back home?”

“No, they have an open port in Hong Kong. But, um, I've been living with my uncle in California for a while, so I’m used to it by now. The rationing,” Zuko explains. “My uncle is more upset about it than I am, he can’t get the special teas he likes as easily.”

“Your uncle, he’s a former Marshal, right?” Suki asks with interest. 

“Yeah, he came here with me. It’s thanks to him that I got to come back.”

“Oh, wait,” Sokka says, realization blooming on his face. “Is your uncle the guy that was next to my dad at the trials? I figured he was with you, but I wasn’t sure.”

Right — Sokka’s _dad._ Sokka’s last name is Nukapiak, as in Marshal Hakoda Nukapiak. Zuko doesn’t know how he could have forgotten that. Sokka is the Marshal’s son. Fuck.

“That’s him,” Zuko replies, swallowing his anxiety with a drink from his small PPDC-branded water bottle. As if he needed any more pressure.

“Uncle Iroh is the best, he gives great advice,” Toph says with a smile. “And Zuko here would be practically feral if it wasn’t for him.”

Zuko scowls at her, squinting. “ _You’re_ practically feral.”

“Yeah, but it’s _on purpose,_ ” she points out, unfazed. “I actively choose to be, while you were just a rabid raccoon for a while there.”

“Toph!” Suki scolds half-heartedly, trying not to smile.

Toph shrugs. “What? He knows it’s true.”

“Hey, be nice to Zuko, he’s my copilot now,” Sokka tells her firmly. “You’re not allowed to bully him.”

Zuko pokes at his food, embarrassingly touched by the support, and Toph sputters. “But bullying Zuko is my favorite thing! You can’t just _take_ it from me, Sokka,” she complains. “Not when he’s finally available for me to bully.”

“Well, too bad. I’m outlawing it,” Sokka says with finality, then turns to Zuko and _winks._

He fucking _winks._ Zuko’s brain turns to pure mush, and his own body feels five feet away from him. He must be in a much deeper circle of hell than he’d thought.

He’s not gonna make it out alive, is he?

“Who died and made _you_ the bully police?” Toph protests. Then she turns her head to Zuko too — everyone wants a piece of him today, apparently. “And _you,_ you’re not gonna say anything?”

Somehow, Zuko manages to say actual words. “Why would I? Someone’s finally taking my side for once.”

“Suki, help me out here,” Toph pleads with her partner.

Suki glances at Zuko sympathetically. “I think Zuko deserves at least a couple days of peace before you start your psychological torture campaign, Toph.”

Toph huffs, crossing her arms over the table. “Unbelievable. These two idiots literally just met and they’re already making declarations of loyalty, while you— Oh no.”

“What?” Zuko turns to her, vaguely concerned. She looks a mixture of displeased and tired.

“I think I just saw the future. Which I obviously can do, since I'm blind,” Toph says flippantly. “And the future is fucking ridiculous. Putting these two together was a mistake.”

“Uh, okay?” Sokka says, raising an eyebrow in confusion. “Thanks for the prophecy, I guess. Not ominous at all, Toph. What does that even mean?”

Zuko tenses up, frowning. “You told me earlier you thought we’d make a good team.”

“In a Jaeger? Yeah, absolutely,” she replies, gesturing with her hands in frustration. “Outside of it? You’re gonna drive everyone insane. You're gonna drive _me_ insane. And Suki too, probably.”

“Toph, what are you—” Suki begins, also confused, but then stops, a surprised expression dawning on her face, as if she’d heard something no one else could. “Oh. Oh _no._ ”

“Yep,” Toph says, bored.

Sokka scowls in annoyance, crossing his arms. “Oh, _no way,_ you can’t just drift-whisper to each other behind our backs like that, that's just rude.” He turns to Suki beside him, poking her in the shoulder, arms still crossed. “Suki, what did she tell you?”

“Sorry, Sokka. Copilot-copilot confidentiality, I can’t tell you anything,” Suki replies, a small sheepish, but somehow knowing smile on her face. She doesn’t look sorry at all.

Sokka turns to look at Zuko, shaking head in exasperation. “Can you see what I've been dealing with everyday, Zuko? Good thing you’re here now.”

Toph groans loudly and smacks her forehead against the table.

“Are you saying you think we should get paired again?” Zuko asks, furrowing his brow. Does Toph really think they’re a bad match? She’d sounded so sure they’d get along earlier — even teasing him about Zuko possibly liking Sokka too much. Why had she suddenly changed her mind?

Sokka's eyes widen slightly at Zuko’s question, and for a second he looks like he’s about to speak, but he doesn’t.

Toph snorts, lifting her head off the table. “I think the damage is done, Sparky. The only way to reverse it would be to ship one of you off to a different continent. Preferably Sokka, he talks too much.”

Sokka blinks at her, offended. “Wow, I’m feeling so attacked right now. We’re _both_ under attack,” he says, then looks at Zuko again. “I’m sorry I brought you into such a hostile environment, Zuko. Next time we’ll just have lunch on our own.”

Suki looks off into the middle-distance. “...Toph, I think you might actually be clairvoyant.”

“I _know._ ”

Zuko is very confused. He feels like there’s a whole separate dimension of this conversation that he doesn’t have access to. Sokka’s right, it _is_ rude of them to use their mind link to communicate when they’re both right there. Should he be worried about being Sokka’s copilot or not?

Sokka rolls his eyes. “Just ignore them. I think they’re just hazing us. And it’s not gonna _work,_ ” he says pointedly, glaring at Toph and Suki. “I’m immune to your mind games, ladies.”

After that, the conversation shifts to random, mundane topics — primarily things Zuko wasn’t there for, people he doesn’t know, references he doesn’t entirely get. It doesn’t really feel alienating though; it feels comfortable, almost. He doesn’t really mind listening quietly as he eats, observing the easy rapport the other three share. Sokka talks animatedly with his hands — he’s very expressive, Zuko notes.

At one point, Zuko risks a dry comment, and when it lands successfully, making them laugh — making _Sokka_ laugh — he feels accomplished in an absurd way, like he’d just gotten a good grade in Talking To Other People 101. _This is why you barely have any friends,_ he thinks to himself.

“Hey, Zuko,” Suki speaks up at some point. “Would you spar with me sometime? I missed the trials, but Sokka said you’re very skilled.”

“Oh, uh,” Zuko says, glancing at Sokka. He looks away, slightly embarrassed. “He did? Yeah, sure, if you want.”

“I just told the truth,” Sokka admits, shrugging. “You kicked ass in there, man.”

“Thank you. I like to think I’m a good fighter, yeah.”

“And so modest, too,” Toph butts in mockingly.

Zuko glares at her half-heartedly. “It’s not like that. I just worked very hard to get to where I am. It’s one thing I can be proud of, I guess.”

“I can respect that,” Suki says. “You _should_ be proud of what you accomplish. Don’t think for a second I'm intimidated, though,” she warns, pointing at him. “I want to see these moves in person.”

“Oooh! Zuko, you’re in trouble,” Sokka says with a grin. “I honestly don’t know who I’d bet on.”

Zuko chuckles slightly. “That’s okay. I welcome a challenge.”

“You’re gonna have to get in line, though, Suki,” Toph says, leaning back with her arms behind her head. “I already called dibs on fighting Zuko earlier. He’s mine first.”

Zuko raises his eyebrow at her. Everyone does want a piece of him, after all. “What am I, your new punching bag?”

“No, man,” Sokka says, with amusement and sincerity in his voice. “I think you’re more like the boss fight. The dragon in the cave. Defeating you is like, an honor.”

Zuko doesn’t quite know what to say to that. He just looks down at his tray, trying to suppress the insistent smile forming on his face at the praise.

Maybe Alaska won’t be so bad, after all.

* * *

After stacking their empty trays in one of the carts parked around the mess hall, the four of them exit together. Toph holds on to Suki’s arm, walking ahead with the easy synchronicity all copilots develop, while Sokka and Zuko trail behind. Zuko watches Sokka’s back and considers his options; he could say nothing, let things unfold however they will and leave it all to chance when they drift, like he’d done with Jet. He could let Sokka set the pace of their partnership, of how much they need to interact outside of the Conn-Pod.

But Zuko doesn’t want to leave it to chance. He wants to do things differently this time. He wants to do this _right._

There’s a nervous hum in his chest as he quickens his pace to walk beside Sokka, and he swallows his anxiety like the cold blade of a sword down his throat.

“Hey, Sokka,” he says, voice thankfully not breaking.

“Yeah?” Sokka turns to him attentively and stops walking.

“What, uh— what Suki said got me thinking,” Zuko continues, scratching his cheek, “I mean, not really what she _said,_ but what she asked me, and then what I answered, about not having seen much of Anchorage yet,” he rambles awkwardly. _That was... Certainly a sentence,_ he thinks. _Points for effort?_ “And I was wondering if you could, uh, maybe... Show me around? It would be useful to see some of it, at least.”

Sokka looks at him for a moment, in a way that Zuko doesn’t quite know how to interpret, but then he blinks, as if pulled out of a trance.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he says, glancing away and then smiling at Zuko. “Sure thing, man. Can’t have you getting lost again, right?” he teases, smile turning crooked and impish. “Not that we’ll get much chance to leave the Shatterdome after we get all officially set up and battle ready, but that’s all the more reason to do this now, while we still can. I’m totally in.”

Zuko feels his shoulders relax with relief. “Oh, good. It’s not too much trouble?” he asks, shifting from foot to foot. “I thought that, maybe, it— we could— um. We still barely know each other. So maybe we could— Talk. Before we drift. So we’re not total strangers anymore?”

Sokka shrugs, casual and easy. “Makes sense to me. We gotta bond somehow, right?” he says, then glances down the corridor before looking back at Zuko. “Can you meet me here in like an hour? I promised my old boss from J-Tech I’d meet up with him after lunch.”

Zuko nods. “Sure, that works.”

One of the corners of Sokka’s mouth pulls up in a teasing smirk, but devoid of malice. “Are you gonna be able to find your way this time?”

Zuko narrows his eyes at him, crossing his arms in annoyance. When is he going to let that go? “Yes. I’m not _that_ helpless.”

“Cool, just checking,” Sokka replies, clearly entertained. “See you later, then?” he asks, walking away backwards, still facing Zuko.

“Yeah,” Zuko answers, but Sokka’s already turned away.

One hour. He’s got one hour to psych himself up for whatever might come up in conversation, whatever he might have to disclose to Sokka. Whatever he knows he must, for this whole thing to go smoothly. Or, as smoothly as possible, considering. Zuko just hopes he doesn’t end up giving Sokka reasons to turn him away.

* * *

“So. Anchorage,” Sokka begins, clapping his glove-covered hands together as they make their trek from the Shatterdome and into the city. “I don’t know how interested you are in the more touristy stuff, but the Abridged Sokka Tour doesn’t really cover that, I’m afraid. We’re mostly gonna walk around downtown, does that work for you?”

“Sure,” Zuko says, skeleton-gloved hands tucked under his armpits for warmth. His breath condenses into small clouds when he speaks. It’s light out, and it isn’t snowing — thankfully — but everything is covered in whites and greys around them as they walk. Zuko’s lips, cheeks and nose sting with the chill.

“We can’t really go too far from the Shatterdome, anyway. It’s a good thing downtown’s not too far,” Sokka says, visibly much less uncomfortable in the cold than Zuko. He even has his hair up in the short ponytail he’d had indoors, leaving his ears and the shaved sides of his head exposed. Zuko shivers just thinking about it, pulling his shoulders up reflexively.

“I forgot how cold it gets here,” Zuko complains. “And the whole— ‘barely any sun in the winter’ thing, too. How do you _live_ like this?”

Sokka just looks at him with a half-smile, amused. “I’ve lived here my whole life. You just get used to it, I guess.” 

“Really? You’ve never left?” Zuko turns to him, curious.

“I mean, I _wanted_ to, you know, travel and see the world and stuff. But we never had the money for it, and then, the war…” Sokka trails off, shrugging. He looks down at the slippery ground as they walk. “I just never got around to it.”

Zuko is suddenly possessed by an insane need to take Sokka wherever he wants to go, to make sure he gets there. It only lasts for a second, but in that second it seems like the most important mission in the world. Zuko clears his throat and pretends his flushed face is entirely due to the cold air.

He _can’t_ just become immediately infatuated with _every_ good looking guy that’s sort of nice to him. (Who is he kidding? Yes. Yes, he can. Honestly, he’s helpless to stop it.)

“Still, you could’ve been stationed at a different Shatterdome,” Zuko points out, willing himself to focus back on the conversation. His boots make soft crunching noises whenever he steps on a patch of snow.

“Yeah, I guess,” Sokka says, thoughtful. “My dad was here though, it made sense for us to stay.”

“Right, your dad— he’s the Marshal. Is that— I mean, it must be a lot of pressure.”

Zuko tries to picture what it would be like to serve under his own father. He’d rather be slowly digested inside of a Kaiju’s stomach.

“Not really. I mean, _yeah,_ kinda — but it’s a good pressure, you know?” Sokka replies. “My dad, he’s always been kind of my hero. I look up to him a lot. Having him around just helps me push myself to be _better,_ you know, to _do_ better.”

Zuko doesn't know. He can’t imagine what that would feel like; having this kind of positive, encouraging relationship with one’s father seems like an entirely alien concept. Something from fairy tales. _Good pressure,_ he thinks. _Like that’s a thing._

When Zuko doesn’t say anything, Sokka continues. “Your dad is kind of a big deal, too, huh? Guess we have that in common already.”

Zuko winces. He knew the difficult topics would start to come up eventually. “Can we talk about something else?”

There’s no point in avoiding the subject, Zuko knows. Sokka would know everything eventually — fuck, Sokka would _know everything, see everything_ — and Zuko half expects him to push harder, dig deeper into the epicenter of his trauma. But he doesn’t. Instead, he respects his request and backs off, with nothing more than an odd look his way.

“Sure. What do you want to talk about, then?”

They’ve reached downtown by now, and Zuko looks around at the buildings, the cars covered in snow, the people walking around all bundled up, the snow-capped mountains in the distance. They’re moving away from the coast and into the city proper. There’s a busker playing on a street corner, singing a song about a forbidden love divided by war (and something about a secret tunnel?). Zuko blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Um, what do you do for fun?”

He cringes internally at what is definitely the lamest possible stock question he could have asked. It makes it sound like they’re on some kind of awkward first date. Sokka takes it in stride, though, chuckling and counting on his gloved fingers.

“Uh, wow, okay, let’s see,” he starts, looking upwards in thought. “I like building stuff, like mechanical stuff — I was in J-Tech for a while before you got here, not sure if you know that — and I guess I’m pretty okay at it, so that’s fun. I like drawing too, sometimes, nothing much, just sketching, and— Oh! I like poetry! Don’t know if you’re into that, some people think it’s lame, but I can whip up a mean haiku,” he says, a continuous flow of words. “At least, my captive audience seemed to think so. We have Talent Nights at the Shatterdome sometimes, by the way. To boost morale and such. We just had one last week, but you should join in for the next one if you have any. Talents, I mean. Or not, just to watch is cool too.” 

Sokka’s rambling, and Zuko has to make an inhuman effort to smother how endearing he finds it. It takes him a second too long to remember he’s supposed to respond.

“Did you perform last week?” he asks. _Remember, act like a human._

Sokka makes a face at the question. “Ah, no. Truth be told, I’m… Not that great at public speaking? But like, a poem _has_ to be performed out loud, right, it _has_ to be spoken. Otherwise it’s a detriment to the art form,” he explains passionately, and like it’s obvious to everyone. “My stage fright is not debilitating or anything, but I don’t wanna ruin the poem by stammering through it or something. Whenever I performed it was mostly because Katara and Toph pushed me into it.”

“Katara?”

A girlfriend, maybe? He’d learned Suki was his ex, but it would make sense if Sokka is currently taken. His obvious extroverted nature, his good looks, the way he moves like he’s at ease in his body and the space he occupies — Zuko envies him a little.

“My sister, and ex-copilot,” Sokka clarifies. “She’s not in the PPDC anymore, so you can’t really meet her yet. I can video call her sometime, though, introduce you two.”

The relief Zuko feels — _sister_ — is short lived, immediately eclipsed by shame at feeling such relief in the first place. That relief meant the acknowledgment of a possibility, one that was off-limits. _Wanting_ was off-limits, for him. The shame is a reminder of that. Zuko’s already fucked up enough without breaking things between him and his new copilot with his _wanting._

Things with Jet had defied the odds, in every way. Jet was very blasé about certain things, and it felt like luck, truly, to Zuko. It could have been much worse. Expecting the same luck to strike twice just seems selfish to him.

Jet and Zuko had just worked, somehow — as copilots, as friends, as friends with benefits. They had kept each other at arm’s length emotionally while inhabiting each other’s minds, and it had made for an oddly stable arrangement. They fit together in a way that was destined to implode from the start — balancing on the razor’s edge of intimacy and self-preservation.

What Zuko _wants,_ however — what he’s always wanted, deep down, knowing he can never have it, _isn’t allowed, doesn’t deserve it_ — is something else entirely. Something truer, something built on solid, welcoming ground. Something to call home.

“What about you? What are you into?”

Sokka’s voice startles Zuko out of his thoroughly derailed, deeply gay train of thought, and he has to recalibrate to be able to respond. He suddenly realizes just how boring he really is. How can he possibly hope to follow Sokka’s long list of hobbies and passions?

“Um, not a lot,” he starts, frowning, trying to buy himself time to think. “I've practiced martial arts all my life. Mostly different styles of kung fu, but others too. My father had me and my sister start very young, so, uh. That’s something that I do.”

Sokka looks at him, tilting his head in curiosity. “Is that for fun, though? Or just because your dad wanted you to?”

“I guess,” Zuko considers, “a bit of both?” He racks his brain, trying to remember having ever enjoyed anything. Suddenly he can’t come up with a single thing. _Come on, think of something else._ “Also I, um, I read a lot too. And I like, uh... Music? And movies? But I guess everyone likes those, so. That doesn’t really count.”

“Sure, it counts,” Sokka says with a shrug, hands tucked in his pockets. “You know, I actually knew a guy who hated movies. Thought they were boring and a waste of time. Katara actually wanted to fight him once. For unrelated reasons, though. He was this old, sexist jerk and she would have one hundred percent kicked his geriatric ass to next Sunday without hesitation if he hadn’t moved away before she could.”

Zuko huffs. “It sounds insane to me to hate movies. But then again, my mother was an actress, so.”

Sokka looks at him in surprise, eyebrows high. “What, really?”

“Yeah. Mostly stage, but she did a couple screen roles too. She stopped before I was born, though,” Zuko says, unable to keep the bitterness from staining his voice. “When she married my father.”

“Did you ever get to see her act? Like, at least the screen stuff, or a recording or…”

Zuko nods, a fond, distant look on his face. “She had a couple tapes. We’d watch them sometimes, just the two of us. I think she missed it.”

Zuko doesn’t think his mother was ever anything other than a trophy for his father. From the moment she moved from Japan to China to be with him, he’d isolated her from her family, her career. He slowly cut away at her edges, anything that might give her an out.

Just one more life that Ozai Long had ruined.

(Azula swears up and down she remembers seeing several half-packed suitcases on top of their mother’s bed a day before she’d died, but Zuko simply refuses to believe she’d just leave them like that. Leave _him._ What does Azula remember, anyway? She had been just a little kid back then. She must be misremembering.)

They stop at an intersection to wait to cross the street, and Sokka uses the opportunity to explain where they are and point out nearby spots for Zuko to use as reference — usually things with a personal memory attached ( _“That ice cream place over there, my dad took us there when I got my wisdom teeth out”_ and _“See that statue of the bear with the raven on its head? Katara always wanted to stop to pet it when she was little”_ ). It’s almost as if he expects Zuko to remember things the same way, with the same associations. Maybe at some point he will, anyway.

“Also, if you see a moose wandering around, don’t freak out. They like to come down from the mountains when it gets cold enough,” Sokka warns casually after they’ve crossed, and Zuko can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. Moose? Real life moose?

“Okay,” he says, frowning in confusion. Better to encounter a moose than a Kaiju, he guesses.

“Here’s one thing you’re gonna want to see, though,” Sokka says, turning to Zuko as he leads him towards a park. The snow has completely buried any areas of grass, and the trees reach upwards, bare and skeletal. They head together towards a bronze monument that stands out against the stark white of the snow.

As they get closer, Zuko understands — it’s a memorial, dedicated to fallen Rangers. They come to a stop in front of it, and he looks up at the stylized statue: two pilots, their hands joined as they meld into each other, holding their helmets under their arms. The foot of the monument is covered in flowers, candles and offerings, either from family members in mourning, or grateful survivors of Kaiju attacks.

Zuko swallows with difficulty, and there’s a deep ache in his chest. The statue is beautiful, but he just feels an acute sense of unworthiness, of guilt and displacement. Zuko is here. He’s _still here,_ but should he be? Should he, when so many others aren’t anymore? Others like Lu Ten? Does he even deserve the second chances he keeps getting?

Sokka stands beside him, and Zuko can see from the corner of his eye that he’s looking at him. He’s not sure what kind of expression he’s supposed to make. Sad? Angry? Touched? Has Sokka brought him here just because it’s relevant to what they do, or because—

“Hey, dude,” Sokka says, and Zuko turns to him. His brows are furrowed in concern. “Are you okay? Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you upset. I’m super used to this thing by now, but I guess it is kind of morbid.”

“No, it’s— I’m fine. Sorry. It’s really beautiful, actually,” Zuko manages, forcing a smile in Sokka’s direction. “Thanks for showing me. I’m glad that KIA pilots are being properly honored like this.”

Sokka looks at him for a moment, analysing, before looking up at the monument again. “I used to like coming here a lot, when I was still piloting Aurora Huntress. It always reminded me how important what we do is, you know? It’s a tough, dangerous job, but someone has to do it. The Kaiju have taken a lot, but they would’ve taken a lot more without the Program. I don’t know, it just— gives me perspective, if that makes sense.”

Zuko observes Sokka’s unexpectedly solemn face in profile, considering his words. They’re each looking at the same loss, the same offering of human life from a different angle. Zuko sees an accusation, a reminder of the cost of failure, a debt he can never fully repay, while Sokka apparently sees an almost pragmatic value in a pilot’s clear-headed sacrifice, a barter of death for life, a tipping of the scales in their favor. It’s worth it, Sokka’s saying. It’s worth it, because it makes a difference.

Funnily enough, they both arrive at the same conclusion — they have a duty, because of what they can do. Maybe that’s part of what being drift compatible means; not having the same perspective but overlapping where it matters, reaching out in understanding. The intersection of A and B on a Venn diagram.

They walk out of the park together, leaving the loaded topic behind, and begin checking out some of the shops along the street. Sokka enjoys window shopping, apparently — he stops several times to look inside, lifting a hand over his forehead to block the glare reflecting on the glass off of the snow outside. He points out things to Zuko, distracted and excitable, but Zuko mostly pays attention to their own reflection on the shop window, standing side by side. They’re a team now. A matched set. Rangers Long and Nukapiak. Zuko and Sokka. _Sokka-and-Zuko._ As new and strange as it feels now, Zuko knows that it’ll eventually become as natural as breathing for both of them, an unconscious, involuntary movement akin to a heartbeat. The thought is simultaneously terrifying and heady.

(He remembers what being _Jet-and-Zuko_ felt like, remembers the coordination of motion and instinct, the wordless assumption of unity as they orbited each other like binary stars. It comes with a feeling of belonging, but also exposure. The kind of exposure they’d both made a point of ignoring at the time. Zuko hadn’t been ready for it — mentally healthy enough for it — but hopefully this time it’s a different story.)

While Sokka is busy examining a pair of boots through the shop window, Zuko turns around to look at their surroundings. Across the street from them is a church, originally Christian going by the architecture, but now completely converted into something else, hollowed out to accommodate something parasitic and dangerous — a BuenaKai temple. A congregation of Kaiju worshippers, gathered near the entrance of the church, clad in their blood red robes and black, embroidered stoles with Kaiju-inspired designs and symbols, is something Zuko hadn’t expected to see during their tour. Just the sight of them is enough to make him uncomfortable, but he should have known it can always get worse. A chill runs down his spine, burning like ice, when one of the congregants turns around and Zuko can see her face — immediately, disturbingly familiar.

Azula.

Zuko crosses the street without looking, somehow avoiding getting run over by a coming car. He runs over to where she is, standing to the side of the larger gathering. She sees him coming towards her, and smiles slowly, malicious and sharp. Her arms are crossed over her robes, red gloves matching.

“Azula? What are you doing here?” he asks urgently, now standing in front of her. He looks her up and down, furious and horrified. “What are you— What are you _wearing?_ ”

“Zuzu! Long time no see,” she greets him, saccharine sweet and dripping with venom. “I’m sure you can guess what I’m doing. Even I know you’re not that stupid.”

Zuko wants to grab her and shake her. “What the fuck, Azula, are you _insane?_ How did this even—”

“Remember our old nannies, Lo and Li? They found me after the Jaeger Program failed to accept me,” she says nonchalantly. _Failed to accept._ “They took me in after Father tossed me aside like trash. You know, like he did to you?”

Zuko frowns, his entire body tense like a coiled spring. Does this mean that when Azula had shown up at the Jasmine Dragon so long ago to taunt them about the Catgator mission she had already become involved with the Church? Had she already been recruited? Or had it happened after, when Zuko had told her to fuck off? Had she felt so alienated and alone that she’d turned to _this?_

“Seriously, Azula? The _BuenaKai?_ ” Zuko hisses, glancing back over his shoulder at the other believers. Believers in the Kaiju as saviors, believers in the holy destruction of the world, a cleansing. “This is extreme, even for you. You can’t seriously believe this stuff, do you? They’re a fucking doomsday cult! You can’t— They want the Kaiju to win the war! I _know_ you know this is insane.”

Azula narrows her eyes at him, cold and cutting like daggers. “They gave me a place here, Zuko. A purpose. They gave me _power._ I'm _someone_ within the church,” she says, confirming Zuko’s fear. She had been looking for somewhere to belong, someone to be. Stripped of any sense of identity and meaning by their father, she’d landed straight into the BuenaKai’s claws. “And who knows, maybe I _want_ the Kaiju to win, too. Maybe I want this wretched world to burn to ashes, maybe I want all of the miserable little people living in it to finally get what they deserve. The Kaiju are so big, so _powerful_ — there’s a beauty to it, Zuzu. They’re gods. They answer to no one, and annihilate anything, anyone in their path. Maybe it’s time we all go extinct after all.”

Zuko shakes his head in disbelief as Azula makes her speech, harsh and blazing like a forest fire. He can’t really tell if she actually believes what she’s saying, or if she’s just angry at the world and everyone who’s wronged her. All he knows is he hates this, and he might have unwittingly had a hand in it, too. “Come back with me, to the Shatterdome. We can find a place for you—”

“I don’t want your pity, _brother,_ ” she spits, snarling. “I don’t need it. I'm perfectly fine where I am.”

Sokka chooses this moment to materialize at Zuko’s side, making him jump slightly. Zuko had forgotten about him entirely, so focused he’d been on Azula. “Zuko? I’m sorry, I got distracted and then I went to find you but you’d disappeared, what are you—”

Azula’s face lights up ominously. “Oh, and who is _this?_ Is this your boyfriend, Zuzu? Quite an upgrade from the last one, I'm positively impressed.”

Zuko glares at her with a tired annoyance. “He’s my new copilot. Sokka, this is my sister, Azula,” he explains through gritted teeth.

“Oh. Well, boyfriend, copilot, same difference. To you, anyways,” she needles with a smirk, and then turns to Sokka. “I wouldn’t recommend drifting with him, you know. It’s probably a disaster zone in there. Daddy issues, mommy issues, sister issues — you name it, he has them.”

Zuko seethes, clenching his fists. “Azula, _stop._ That’s enough. Come on, Sokka, we’re leaving,” he says, still looking at her. “Think about what I said. There is a place for you, if you just let me help.”

Azula just rolls her eyes, as if her brother trying to get her away from a doomsday cult was nothing more than a minor daily inconvenience, an annoying habit he has that she merely tolerates. Zuko grabs Sokka’s arm to pull him along as they walk away, impelled by anger and impulse, and there’s an unexpected familiarity to it. He lets him go after they’ve crossed the street again, when Zuko realizes what he’s doing. He takes a couple deep breaths, while Sokka stares at him in silence. Zuko starts walking again, aimless but needing to move, just do _something,_ and Sokka can’t take it anymore.

“What was _that_ about?” he asks warily, walking alongside him.

Zuko sighs heavily. “My family is complicated.”

Sokka is quiet for a while, frowning down at the ground as they walk, deep in thought. Zuko sneaks glances at him nervously.

“...What?” he asks hesitantly. Running into Azula like this can’t have done him any favors when it comes to laying the groundwork for a positive partnership, and getting Sokka to like him.

Sokka lifts his head, but doesn’t look at Zuko, speaking clouds of mist into the cold air in front of him. He sounds frustrated. “I’m sorry, man, I know she’s your sister and all, but it’s just— It’s insane to me that _anyone_ could be pro-Kaiju. So many people are dead. So many— My _mom’s_ — Shit,” he cuts himself off, closing his eyes. He takes a deep breath, and opens them again, finally turning to look at Zuko. “I’m sorry, I just— I have no love for sympathizers.”

_Fuck._ Sokka’s mother is dead and Azula basically implied she deserved it. This isn’t going well, is it.

“I get it. Azula is—” Zuko starts, but changes his mind. He can’t really explain Azula in a straightforward way. Instead he looks at Sokka sympathetically. “I’m really sorry about your mother.”

“Yeah. Thanks. I lost a childhood friend, too,” he says quietly. “Did you... Did you lose anyone?”

_Huh._ It’s a strange question. Does Sokka not know about the Catgator disaster at all? Or does he just not know who Lu Ten was? Or, worse, is he making a pointed jab at his role in his death? Is that why he’d shown him the monument? To make him admit his failure, to let him know he can’t repeat it now that they’re supposed to pilot together? Zuko hopes it’s the former, but the latter doesn’t seem that improbable.

Did Zuko lose anyone? _Yes,_ technically. A cousin, a borrowed brother. Did he lose him to the Kaiju? _Yes,_ again, technically. Does this make him a victim, blameless and allowed to mourn him like so many others who had lost loved ones to the Kaiju War? _No._

If Sokka is trying to find common ground, Zuko can’t offer him any; they’re not the same. Now, if what he’s actually trying to do is prod him until he breaks? _Ouch._ It doesn’t really bode well for their future as copilots, even if Zuko feels like he deserves it.

Neither possibility bodes well, really. Physical compatibility isn’t enough for a good match — they need to mesh well together mentally, emotionally, for the drift to be strong and effective. Zuko knew going in that his particular cocktail of trauma and failure would make him a challenging drift partner; anyone unlucky enough to be matched with him would be opening a Pandora’s box, holding a live grenade when the neural link connects. Although the challenge is entirely on Zuko, really: to not let all of his mess get in the way, to keep it under control, to compensate for it as much as he can. To make it work.

Zuko is silent for so long, lost in his spiraling thoughts, that Sokka must conclude that he isn’t going to answer at all, and tries to reassure him.

“You don’t have to talk about it if—”

“It’s okay,” Zuko interrupts, before Sokka can feel too guilty for asking. Maybe he really doesn’t know, after all. It had been a genuine question. “There’s not much point in not talking about it. I... I guess I _should_ address the elephant in the room.”

Sokka looks at him, searching. “...You mean the mission. _That_ mission,” he says, with barely restrained curiosity, and— Fair. Anyone would be curious, especially someone who in the near future is supposed to be stuck with him inside a giant metal deathtrap/superweapon, tasked with the lives of thousands of people.

“Yeah. I... You, um, you asked if I lost anyone,” Zuko says softly, avoiding Sokka’s gaze. “I did. My cousin was in the other Jaeger. The one that got, um...”

“...Shit,” Sokka mutters in horror and understanding.

“Yeah. My uncle — the one that brought me here. He was my uncle’s son. Lu Ten,” Zuko makes it a point to say his name — he had a _name._ “Lotus Conqueror was supposed to be our backup, but we—” he stops, the words getting caught in his throat. He breathes, swallows, tries again. “We fucked up. _I_ fucked up. I should have known that Jet wasn’t... He should never have gotten in the Jaeger that day. I should have stopped him.”

Sokka is quiet next to him, listening intently.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop regretting... Everything that happened that day. It cost my uncle his son, and there’s nothing I can do to fix that.”

What he doesn’t tell Sokka is what it cost him, and him alone: losing his father’s — not love, it had never been love at all, Zuko had just been too naive, too needy to see it — _approval,_ conditional as it was, once more. For the second time in his life. It had felt like a twisted, cruel kind of _déja vu_ — _Zuko had been here before._ That self-serving approval that masqueraded as paternal love had already started to feel increasingly hollow to Zuko. It hadn’t felt as fulfilling as he’d expected it to — especially seeing as he and Azula had simply traded places, like pawns on a chess board, and he knew, he _knew_ how she must have been feeling. Even so, it still felt like a swift kick in the teeth. An old, poorly healed wound being torn open, shoddy stitches ripping scarred flesh. It felt like his face had been burned anew. He doesn’t tell Sokka any of that.

Sokka probably wants to know more, wants to understand what happened, know exactly the kind of copilot he’s getting — but Zuko doesn’t know if he has the strength to be more specific.

“So. Yeah,” he says awkwardly, “I know I’m probably not your idea of— I’m not the ideal copilot you were probably expecting—”

“Can I ask you something?” Sokka interrupts, and Zuko looks up at him. Sokka’s eyes are piercing, rendering Zuko helpless.

“Um, sure.”

“Why didn’t you get dismissed too? I know Jet was.”

Zuko grimaces and closes his eyes. _Yeah, that._ “I know what you’re thinking—”

“Already? And we haven’t even drifted yet,” Sokka jokes, and when Zuko looks at him his face is still mostly serious, listening for Zuko’s answer, but he’s clearly making an effort to lift the mood, made heavy by the conversation. Zuko is so grateful; it feels a bit like an olive branch, an attempt to convey that Sokka is willing to listen before making his judgment. Zuko already feels a little bit lighter, and he gives Sokka a small tentative smile. Sokka returns it, encouraging him to continue.

“My father. You must have guessed that,” Zuko explains, and Sokka nods. “He didn’t do it for me, though. He couldn’t give two shits about me if you paid him,” he continues, and chuckles bitterly. “And he really, really likes money. No, he did it for _himself,_ so that I didn't bring him any more shame than I already have.” Zuko’s voice comes out hard, with edges sharpened by the inherent betrayal of being unloved by a parent. “It doesn’t really matter why he did it, though. I still got away unpunished. I should have been dismissed too.”

_I’m glad I wasn’t,_ is what he doesn’t say, _or I wouldn’t be here right now._

“I bet Jet wasn’t happy about it,” Sokka says, raising one eyebrow. 

Zuko huffs. “No kidding.”

When he doesn’t say anything else, Sokka speaks up again. “You still left, though. Why come back now? No offense but, it’s been, what? Four years? That’s a pretty long time.”

“I wanted to come back sooner. After—” Zuko starts, but doesn’t continue, clenching his jaw. He tucks his gloved hands in his pockets. “I wasn’t... I wasn't in the best shape, after what happened.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Yeah, but. I didn’t like that I was just... On the sidelines, not doing anything to help, not doing _anything,_ you know?” Zuko says with a frown, and looks up at Sokka. He finds a deep recognition in his eyes. “But my uncle, he— He wasn’t the same, anymore. And he...” Zuko sighs again. “He really didn’t want me to come back.”

“He doesn’t want to lose you, too,” Sokka concludes.

In the back of his mind, Zuko can hear the chorus he knows well by now — _It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me to die that day, and not Lu Ten. Why did I survive?_

He swallows, trying to brush the thoughts away. “Yeah.”

Sokka startles him out of his dark mood by clapping a hand on his shoulder, a full stop. “But, hey. You _are_ back now. And your family is... Kind of a lot, from what I gather, but your uncle seems pretty chill?” he says, and Zuko just blinks at him. ‘Kind of a lot’ is one way to put it. “And, look. I’ll admit that I had my preconceived ideas about you — which, I mean, you’re pretty mysterious so there were a lot of gaps to fill, okay, and I have a big imagination — but! _But._ So far, you seem like a pretty okay dude to me,” Sokka rambles, giving Zuko a small smile.

_Mysterious?_ Really? Zuko can’t imagine thinking of himself as _mysterious;_ it makes him sound so much, well, _cooler_ than he is. He’s just _Zuko._ He may have a tragic backstory but it didn’t make him into the _film noir_ anti-hero that ‘mysterious’ brings to mind. All he has to show for it is a gross, ugly scar and a fuckton of anxiety. (And maybe a _couple_ more issues, but who’s counting.)

“No one is an ideal copilot, dude,” Sokka continues good-naturedly. “You think I don’t have any shit I'd rather not have? Shit I’d rather no one see? That’s the thing about the drift, right, you can’t really hide anything, but you also realize that _everyone_ has something — some trauma, a memory, a secret, you name it. And it only works because both pilots make a conscious choice to look at each other, look at all that, and not turn away. It’s hard as fuck, but it _works,_ ” he says, gesturing passionately. Zuko watches him come alive as he speaks, mesmerized. “And it’s really poetic if you think about it, right? To save the world and punch the alien monsters, you _have_ to trust someone so completely that they become a part of you? It’s— honestly, it’s bonkers. This stuff keeps me up at night,” Sokka says, then blinks as he seems to catch himself. “Wait, what were we talking about? Sorry, I went on a tangent there.”

Zuko chuckles, even though Sokka hasn’t really said anything funny. _(Great, now you’re just laughing at anything he says, that’s like the gayest thing you could possibly do right now. Get a grip, Zuko.)_ His chest is doing something fluttery and strange, something that has everything to do with how attractive Sokka is when he’s passionate about something. Zuko wouldn’t mind hearing him talk about anything. “It’s fine. It was a nice tangent. I’ve never thought about it like that.”

“Really? I didn't make you dizzy?” Sokka asks sheepishly, gesturing in spirals with his fingers. “Toph says I have brain goblins. I've told her the medical term is ADHD but she won’t listen.”

There’s a little voice somewhere in Zuko’s head saying _‘you do make me dizzy, but not for that reason’_ , and Zuko violently suppresses it, shuts it up. On the outside, he’s laughing. “When has Toph ever listened to anyone?”

“True. I don’t know why I bother,” Sokka says, sighing dramatically. “Wait, okay, I remember! What I _meant_ to say is that, you obviously blame yourself for what happened, and, I mean, who knows? I wasn’t there, so I can’t really say it was or it wasn’t your fault — but just from hearing you talk about it, I can tell you wouldn’t let it happen again. Or at least, I’m trusting you wouldn’t.”

Zuko looks at him in surprise. They’ve only just met, and Sokka is actively _choosing_ to place this huge amount of trust — of _faith_ — in Zuko, _just like that._ He feels something in his chest tighten, unlock, and then begin to slowly, _slowly_ unfurl. Something that has been locked away and dormant for too long.

“The drift is basically a trust fall, if you think about it,” Sokka says simply, almost absently as he looks away.

The words swirl around in Zuko’s head, and he thinks about falling. Falling of a different kind. He worries that, if he’s not careful, he just might end up letting himself fall, after all.

* * *

“Hey, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting kinda hungry,” Sokka says some time later, patting his stomach, after exhausting his list of things around downtown to show Zuko. “Do you wanna maybe grab something to eat? There’s this place nearby that has this really handy discount for pilots and PPDC personnel.”

Zuko looks at him with his one eyebrow raised and a small smile, a mix of both confusion and amusement. “You’re hungry again? We just had lunch a few hours ago.”

“I have a fast metabolism, okay? I’m a growing boy,” Sokka says defensively, gesturing with his hands. “A twenty-two year old growing boy, but nonetheless.” He smiles lopsidedly at Zuko, and indicates a direction with his head. “C’mon, if I’m gonna be showing you around properly, then food’s part of it too.”

Zuko laughs slightly, cheeks rosy from the cold. “Okay,” he says, shrugging. “Lead the way, then.”

They walk together, sharing a surprisingly companionable silence for two people who have only just met. Sokka has a much clearer picture of who Zuko is now, though, after spending this short time together.

He’s not an asshole at all, it turns out. He’s just a guy. A slightly awkward, vaguely sad guy. A guy with some baggage, clearly — but that’s no different from any other pilot Sokka has ever met.

The actual specifics of his new copilot’s past are still a mystery to him, but that will soon inevitably change. The fact that Zuko had decided to tell Sokka (even if a bit vaguely) about his last mission, however painful it was to revisit the memories, already says a lot about how he approaches his responsibility as a pilot. It’s as though he thinks he owed Sokka an explanation, owed him this piece of his past, simply out of decency and respect for his partner — they’re doing this together, and Zuko doesn’t want Sokka to go in blind, to be left wondering. If Sokka had been worried about Zuko being reckless in a fight, or unwilling to be held accountable, he’s not anymore. 

Sokka can’t deny that he wishes he knew more about what exactly happened during the mission — all the secrecy and mystery is just making him more curious. Zuko had mentioned something about regretting not keeping Jet away from the fight, which implies that Jet had been responsible for things going wrong; but, at the same time, Zuko clearly blames himself heavily for the consequences of the disaster. To the point that he’d intentionally tried to get dismissed as well, instead of feeling relieved that he wasn’t. Whatever happened that day, inside Liberator Blue’s Conn-Pod, it occurs to Sokka that it might not have been as black and white as he’d initially, prematurely, decided.

Maybe when they finally drift with each other, things will become clearer. Either way, Zuko has been a pretty positive surprise so far. 

Sokka sneaks glances at him as they walk. The place he’s thinking of is only a few blocks away, but they’re not in a rush, keeping a leisurely pace as they navigate the snowy sidewalks of downtown. Zuko mostly looks down at his feet — possibly trying not to slip on the ice — shoulders brought up to his ears and hands hidden in his pockets, trying to stay warm. His black parka is nowhere near as thick as it should be, Sokka notices with amusement. It’s more fashionable than effective. _Gotta maintain the dark alternative aesthetic, I guess,_ he thinks.

“You're not a vegetarian, are you?” Sokka asks. He can’t remember what Zuko had filled his tray with at lunch, but it occurs to him that taking him to his favorite burger place might not go so well if he happens to fit the goth-vegan stereotype. It’s not a problem if he does, but Sokka’s tender meat-loving heart will definitely weep a little bit.

“Oh, uh, no. I’ll eat anything,” Zuko says without thinking, then blushes even more red than he’d already been due to the cold. “Uh, I mean, not _anything,_ I meant— I don’t— I don’t have a preference. For food,” he stammers, cringing. 

Oh, _wow._ Sokka bites back a smile. He can’t help but find Zuko’s awkwardness painfully cute. The way he’d stumbled through asking Sokka to show him around earlier had been so damn charming that Sokka actually forgot for a whole moment that he was supposed to be keeping his interest in him under control and from showing on his face. Working with Zuko is going to be a challenge just for the fact that Sokka can’t shamelessly flirt with him the way he’d like to without putting their partnership at risk. If he took that chance and Zuko wasn’t into it, it could mess up the whole dynamic of their team.

Zuko looks like he’s desperately hoping the ground will open up and swallow him, so Sokka takes pity on him. “Awesome,” he says, breezing past any discomfort. “‘Cause that would’ve been a _big missed steak._ ” He flashes Zuko a playful grin and puts up double finger guns. Zuko looks at him and groans, grimacing at the pun — but Sokka thinks he can see the beginnings of a reluctant smile hidden behind it, and his grin widens.

They finally reach their destination, a small burger joint nestled between two buildings. The sign above the door shouts ICEBOX BURGERS in a thick, stencil-like font, and Sokka watches as Zuko looks up to examine it when they stop in front of the restaurant.

“It used to be called something else, but they changed it after the Shatterdome was built,” Sokka explains, as he begins to push the door open. “I personally feel like they should’ve just gone with IceBurg, y’know, but I guess they really wanted to make it a themed thing.”

It’s much warmer inside, and Zuko sighs, visibly relaxing. He takes off his gloves as he looks around the place. It’s luckily not very busy, with only a couple tables occupied. The line at the counter isn’t long either. Sokka eyes Zuko expectantly.

“So?” he asks, removing his parka and tying it around his waist.

“It’s nice,” Zuko replies, turning back to him. He raises his eyebrow and gives Sokka a small smirk. “Very American.”

Sokka grimaces. “Ugh. That’s definitely not a compliment.” 

“I’m joking. I’ve been living here for so long I’m basically American too, at this point,” Zuko says, smirk shifting into a small smile. “But you have to admit that this is a bit cliche.”

“Sure, okay,” Sokka concedes, leading them closer to the standing menu. “But I bet that _this,_ ” he points at a specific item on the display, “is something you haven’t tried before. It’s a reindeer burger.”

“Reindeer?” Zuko repeats, brows raised in surprise.

“Yep. It’s the house specialty.” Zuko squints at the menu, and Sokka falters. Maybe this wasn’t his best idea. “There’s a pretty decent Chinese place a block from here if you wanna go there instead.”

“No, this is fine,” Zuko says, turning to him again, smiling mostly with his eyes. “My uncle is always saying I need to broaden my horizons. And the point was to eat something local, right? I’m trusting your taste.”

Sokka grins, wide and bright. “Well, if you _really_ want to go local then I should get you some akutaq sometime.”

They get seated at a table while Sokka explains the intricacies of traditional native ice cream to Zuko, who, to his credit, seems actually interested. He listens intently, propping his chin up with his fist when they sit, so Sokka keeps talking. He keeps talking so he won’t pay attention to the way Zuko looks in the warm light of the vintage-style light bulbs hanging overhead; the way the glow softens him, yet highlights his angular cheekbones.

Sokka looks away — if he doesn’t he’ll inevitably start staring. _Yeah, he’s pretty, genius. We’ve established that. Don’t make it weird._ He spots a waitress coming their way, and quickly stretches out a hand to Zuko, opening and closing it in a gesture of request. “Gimme your badge, we’re gonna make use of that discount.”

Zuko snorts, but unhooks the PPDC badge from his belt all the same, handing it to him. Sokka pretends not to notice the way his skin tingles when Zuko’s hand brushes his.

When the waitress approaches them, Sokka smiles winsomely, telling her _‘two Ivory Victors, please’_ and showing her his and Zuko’s badges. She takes their orders and tucks the table menus under her arm, leaving them alone again.

It’s part of the gimmick — all of the items on the menu are named after Jaegers and Kaiju. It just so happens that Sokka’s dad’s Jaeger is the name they’d picked for this particular sandwich. He and Bato are local heroes, after all.

“Is this why you like coming here?” Zuko asks with a raised eyebrow, sounding amused.

“It’s _part_ of it, sure,” Sokka admits. “It’s pretty corny, yeah, but at the same time, I feel like, with the whole messed up situation we’re in, sometimes it’s good to find some humor in it, find a way to make it less terrifying.”

Zuko hums, listening. Sokka folds a napkin as he speaks, trying to keep his hands busy.

”It’s— We’re at war. The whole world is. And it’s awful, and ugly, and gruesome, and you and I, pilots like us, we’re right in the middle of it. This kind of thing? Makes us seem like fun action movie heroes, instead of, uh, soldiers, marching to our deaths.” Sokka shrugs, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a not-quite-smile. “I’m usually more of a realist, but it’s nice to pretend, sometimes."

“I guess, when you put it that way,” Zuko says, thinking. “I can see the appeal.”

“But also, I’m, um. A bit of a Jaeger enthusiast,” Sokka confesses, an embarrassed grin on his face. His napkin is practically origami at this point. “I’ve even got a couple figurines in my quarters. Katara used to make fun of me for it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Zuko’s face illuminates with a smile, and Sokka bites his own tongue to keep from reacting. “Which ones do you have?”

Sokka cringes. “Yeah, so, when I said ‘a couple’ I actually meant, uh, more than that? So I’m not gonna list them all for you, or you’ll think I’m an obsessive weird fanboy on our very first day, but, uh. You’re gonna get to see them eventually, anyway,” he says, realizing as he says it that they’ll be rooming together in the near future, as soon as Zuko’s room transfer paperwork goes through, which, _oh, boy._ If his voice breaks a little when he speaks again, Zuko doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t have Liberator Blue, though, if you were wondering. The Mark-1’s and -2’s are harder to find online, for some reason.”

“I didn’t even know they’d made one for Liberator. I don’t think Jet knows, either. We never really paid much attention to this kind of thing, like merch and stuff,” Zuko says, leaning back in his seat and resting his hands on the table. He scrapes at one of his nails with his thumb, scratching off the polish. “I’m surprised anyone would want one, after… After what happened.”

Sokka feels a pang of sympathy. It must be exhausting, carrying that guilt around all the time. “She’s pretty rare, I think they discontinued her line early. Which is a shame, actually, because I honestly think she was the most underrated of the Mark-2’s,” he says, then quickly adds, “The real Jaeger, not the toy, obviously.”

“How so?” Zuko asks, brows drawn in curiosity.

Well. Sokka hopes Zuko won’t regret asking, because Sokka’s about to get nerdy. “I mean, she was the first to have blade-like weaponry, and the first to incorporate carbon nanotubing and thermal energy to guarantee cauterization,” he lists off from memory. “That’s pretty huge. Plus, her B61 Tigerhead twin hooks were undeniably iconic,” Sokka continues, miming hooks with his fingers, painfully aware of just how dorky he sounds right now. Infodumping is rarely appealing. _“And_ she had a nice silhouette, from a design perspective. There’s a lot to like about her.”

Zuko just looks at him intently, golden eyes reflecting the light. “...You really know your Jaegers.”

“I, uh, yeah. I'm... Kind of a huge nerd about them,” Sokka says, sheepish and self-conscious, fiddling nervously with his helix hoops. “If you quizzed me about any Jaeger built to date I'd probably ace it. Not trying to brag or anything, I just have way too much Jaeger info taking up brain space.”

Before Zuko can say anything in response, the waitress comes back with their orders. She places the plates in front of them with a standard customer service smile, and Zuko thanks her before she leaves, with an amount of sincerity that gives Sokka the impression that it’s not simply out of politeness. Sokka’s original idea of him as a rich snob seems laughable now.

“So,” Sokka says, eyeing Zuko and picking up his burger, “I, uh, I hope you like it, or I’m gonna look like a fool for bringing you here.”

“I’m sure it’s good,” Zuko says, then raises his eyebrow at him. “Also, I have eaten a burger before, you know. It’s not like it’s going to be a completely new experience.” He looks down at the sandwich in front of him, examining it as he picks it up. “Though I’ve never had one this huge.”

Sokka mercifully manages to stop himself from blurting out the completely tasteless _‘that’s what she said’_ that automatically pops into his mind by taking a bite of his burger. Poor Zuko is just trying to have a normal conversation with him, while Sokka’s mind is spitting out sex jokes an annoying thirteen year old would make.

He needs a new brain. Stat. Before Zuko drifts with him and finds out that he’s a total immature idiot.

Zuko bites into his own burger as well, and Sokka waits for his reaction. “It’s good,” he says after chewing, and Sokka smiles. But then he watches Zuko pour an excessive amount of hot sauce on it, somewhere between appalled and mesmerized.

“You like it spicy, huh?” Sokka says without thinking, and immediately regrets it. So much for not flirting with him.

Zuko just looks up at him and blinks, startled, but then he blushes so pretty that Sokka has to forgive himself for the accidental innuendo.

“Uh…” He’s frozen in place, looking at Sokka with wide eyes.

“Not— I didn’t mean— Uh, sorry, man,” Sokka rushes to clarify, chuckling awkwardly, apologetic. “I meant the food. Not trying to make a pass at you, I swear. That’d be weird.”

Zuko’s face shifts instantly into a more subdued expression. The line of his shoulders becomes tense. “No, yeah, it’s— Fine. I, uh... I didn’t think you were. Don’t worry about it,” Zuko replies stiffly, and Sokka thinks he can see it in his eyes as some of his walls go up again. Shit. He really needs to control his big mouth.

Zuko doesn’t say anything else, and Sokka hopes that changing the subject will be enough to get past the awkwardness his slip up created. As long as he does it naturally enough. “You know, It’s so funny how this seems like your first time here when, I mean, it’s _not,_ technically,” he says, gesturing with one hand. “Like, what, did you stay inside the whole time in the Academy or something?”

Zuko hesitates before answering. “I... Pretty much, yeah, actually. I never even left the island. I basically just spent all my time training and— Um, yeah,” he interrupts himself, looking away. “Didn’t really get out much. My program was in the spring-summer semester, too, so. It definitely wasn’t this cold.”

Sokka furrows his brows, bemused. “Kodiak is beautiful in the warmer seasons, though. Please tell me you at least got to see that.”

“Um, not much,” Zuko responds, squirming in his seat. “I... Don’t think I would have been in the right mindset to appreciate it, either way.”

Sokka looks at him, considering. He decides not to pry. “That’s too bad. When it gets warmer again we should go exploring a bit, there’s lots of cool spots I could show you,” he says, then catches himself. “That’s, I mean— If that’s something you’d want,” he adds with an almost shy quirk of his lips.

“Yeah,” Zuko says, voice breathy, a small smile appearing on his face. “I’d like that. Jet and I never got around to doing that before we got stationed in Hong Kong.”

Zuko’s mention of Jet suddenly brings to Sokka’s mind what Azula had said earlier. _‘Boyfriend, copilot, same difference. To you, anyways.’_ Had she been telling the truth? It’s not rare for copilots to be together in a more romantic sense. Sokka’s always thought it must make everything so much more complicated. Heightened, for better _and_ worse.

“So, Jet. You guys were dating?” Sokka asks nonchalantly, trying to mask his curiosity. He thinks back to the video he’d watched of Zuko and Jet’s interview, and attempts to picture them together, like together-together. The video had been too short to get a sense for their dynamic, or imagine any displays of affection. They hadn’t even been interacting with each other. Sokka can kind of see it, though, in a ‘the loner and the rebel’ kind of way. They’d probably made a very dramatic, cool, edgy couple. The leather jackets and cigarettes, fuck-society type.

(The fact that Azula had called Sokka an upgrade makes him feel strangely pleased with himself, too — even though he’s pretty sure she had only been trying to provoke her brother, and not making an honest assessment of him versus Zuko’s ex. It’s not like Sokka’s actually in the running for the boyfriend position, anyway.)

“No,” Zuko answers, to Sokka’s surprise. He quickly dispels his cinematic mental image of Zuko and Jet riding a motorcycle together in the streets of Hong Kong at night. Okay, then. “We never really… We weren’t dating, exactly, but we were... Involved, I guess,” Zuko explains, and then narrows his eyes, suddenly tensing up as if expecting a physical altercation. “Why, is that going to be a problem?”

Sokka frowns. Shit, had Zuko interpreted his awful backpedaling earlier as homophobia? Sokka does _not_ want to be giving off homophobe vibes. “Uh, no, I’m bi, dude, it’s fine,” he clarifies, trying to sound reassuring. Zuko shouldn’t feel unsafe with him. Thankfully, he relaxes at Sokka’s words, and then just looks at him, as if he’s reorganizing something in his mind.

“I was just— How’s that even _like?_ Drifting with someone you’re, quote-unquote, ‘not-dating’?” Sokka continues, miming the quotes with his hands. “Must be intense. I mean, my sister used to be my copilot and that was already kinda weird. There’s things you just _don’t_ wanna know about your sibling, you know?”

“Yeah,” Zuko replies, thinking. “I guess Jet and I, we just… We had an understanding. There were things about each other we just didn’t touch or address. Might have not been the best idea, in the end,” he says vaguely, picking at his food. He looks up at Sokka then, hesitating. “The sex was pretty good, though,” he says, his mouth curled in a smirk, but his eyes reveal a nervousness, a fear, even. Like he’s wondering if he’s crossed a line.

Sokka is so startled that he chokes on nothing, because _oh my god._ Astonished laughter bubbles up in his chest, spilling out easily. He had _not_ been expecting that from Zuko at all. “You’re just full of surprises, you know that?” he asks, humor coloring his voice.

Zuko simply shrugs, hesitant smirk turned into a cute little dorky lopsided grin. Sokka is captivated by it. “You know being unpredictable is the best way to confuse the enemy.”

“And I’m the enemy?” Sokka can’t stop smiling.

“Not really,” Zuko says, looking downwards again, but he’s smiling too. “But it’s a habit that’s hard to turn off. So you’ll just have to endure being confused for a while.” 

Fuck. Resisting Zuko’s going to be impossible isn’t it? Sokka really has his work cut out for him. 

“I think I can handle that.”

* * *

The sun is already setting by the time they get back to the Shatterdome in the late afternoon. They walk across the ice-covered tarmac together and head for the freight lift, passing by officers on utility vehicles and forklifts moving around supplies, Kaiju samples and Jaeger parts. Sokka rambles excitedly about something or other, while Zuko listens, more content than he’d expected to be.

Their time together had gone... Surprisingly well, all things considered. Sokka is very easy to like. He’s funny, and genuine, and had been willing to listen to Zuko’s side of the story. And after listening to it, after hearing Zuko tell him directly, out loud, that he blamed himself for what had happened, Sokka had decided to put his trust in him anyway. He’d rolled with every punch that Zuko had inadvertently thrown him, from his social awkwardness to his complicated history to even _Azula._ It’s honestly impressive. And during all that, he’d somehow still found the time to be— 

Sweet. And smart. And passionate, and handsome, and—

And _bisexual._ Zuko’s torture continues. If Sokka were straight it would make it a lot easier for him to snuff out the spark of completely misguided hope and want that had ignited in his chest against his will. That pointless whisper of _‘what if’_ bouncing around in his skull like a retro screensaver, or a buzzing fly, hovering over the long-dead carcass of his self-esteem.

Toph had been right. Zuko is definitely in danger of liking Sokka way too much.

They walk together into the freight lift, and Sokka presses the button on the panel, kick-starting their slow fall into the depths of the Shatterdome. Zuko exhales heavily, standing next to him. As pleasant as their afternoon had turned out to be, Zuko feels emotionally drained — all the talking and sharing of heavy things he’s done today are finally catching up to him.

There’s still one more thing he has to open up about to Sokka, though. He has to, because he won’t be able to hide in the drift; everything will be easily accessible, from his deadname to his childhood memories to his relationship with his body. It’s a paralyzing, daunting thought — but still, he has to. He has to if he truly wants to go about it differently this time.

He’d never actually told Jet with words, just waited and allowed him to find out for himself. Part of him had _wanted_ Jet to react badly, maybe even get physical, either because he’d wanted someone to kick his ass or because he’d wanted to kick someone’s ass — indirect self-harm by proxy or pure, targetless, unchanneled anger. If actively _wanting_ to get hate-crimed isn’t an indication of his mental state at the time, he doesn’t know what is.

He’d gotten uncharacteristically lucky, though, and Jet hadn’t cared. It had been almost anticlimactic. All the tension, all the contained energy latent in Zuko’s body never got the release he wanted. Until it got a different kind of release. 

(Jet pressing him against a wall, teeth against his neck, his racing pulse, and a hand down the front of his pants, and his _fingers—_ )

But this time — this time he knows better. He knows that had been self-destructive, and part of a pattern of bad, risky decisions that had eventually contributed to the events of that awful, hellish day in the Hong Kong Miracle Mile. A pattern of impulsiveness, poorly dealt-with issues and lack of healthy communication between copilots. Zuko doesn’t want to do that again.

So he knows; he has to come out to Sokka. In person, face to face, using his words like a big boy, instead of leaving it up to fate and luck and whatever the odds were that Sokka wasn’t a transphobic asshole. It sucks, it _always_ sucks, but if Zuko wants things to be different this time around, he’s going to have to force himself to start making healthier choices.

Even if it feels like pulling teeth.

“Hey, Sokka, um,” he begins, hesitant, willing his voice not to tremble. He watches through the lift car’s open frame the way the floor numbers stenciled against the concrete shaft pass them by as they descend. “There’s something... Something I need to tell you.”

“Sure, what’s up?” Sokka turns to him, curious.

Zuko doesn’t meet his eyes, looking around instead. The nervous rumble in his chest grows, echoing the mechanical hum of the lift. “I’m… Uh. There’s something about me that will... That will become very obvious when we drift,” he says, flexing his gloved fingers. “But I wanted to tell you directly first, so it doesn’t... Catch you off guard.”

“You’re not a serial killer, are you?”

Zuko whips his head around to look at Sokka, finally. “What? _No._ ”

Sokka sighs in feigned relief, eyebrows high. “Oh, thank god. That would suck, sharing a headspace with a murderer,” he says, then squints at Zuko dramatically, holding his chin as if examining him. “A long lost prince from a far off land, then? A masked vigilante? Or _maybe—_ ”

Zuko’s never been so torn between frowning and smiling. “Sokka, _stop._ I’m being serious,” he says, crossing his arms. He really shouldn’t be surprised that his type is guys who manage to simultaneously be annoying and charming to the same degree.

Sokka drops the act immediately, facing Zuko earnestly now. “Right, of course. Sorry. What is it?”

Having his full attention somehow makes Zuko even more nervous. “I’m...” he tries, lips moving but not forming words. He swallows, tries again. “The thing is that I...” he trails off, voice breaking, trying to hold Sokka’s gaze. Fuck, he’s choking. _Why is this so damn hard every time?_ His hands are trembling, so he clenches them into fists.

The lift is still descending. Sokka is looking at him with concern now, brows furrows and eyes attentive. “...Yeah? Take your time.”

Zuko swallows again, heart in his throat. He makes an impulse decision, and presses the lift button again. The car stops, leaving them suspended in between levels, alone in purgatory in a metal cage. They stand silently in front of each other for a moment, Sokka waiting patiently for Zuko to speak. Zuko closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Come on, _come on._ Just push the words out. He can _do this._

“I’m— Transgender. I’m a trans man.” The words finally come tumbling out, a bullet he can’t unshoot, can’t take back. He feels dislocated, outside of his body, watching it speak for him. He almost can’t hear his own voice over the heartbeat pounding in his ears. “It’s... I didn't want you to be blindsided by coming across it in my memories.” _I wanted to know how you would react first._

He braces himself for the worst.

“Oh. Okay.”

Those two words feel like a bucket of ice water spilling over Zuko’s head, the fear being replaced by shock, then anger and distrust. He narrows eyes at Sokka, at his tone. “You sound disappointed.”

Sokka raises an eyebrow and shrugs, sheepish. “No, I mean— Kinda? Not because— Not because I’m anti-trans or anything!” he tacks on quickly, gesturing urgently with his palms forward, “I’m definitely cool with it! It’s all good, honest, it’s just... After all that build-up and suspense I guess I was expecting something more... Dramatic?”

Oh, _fuck you,_ Sokka. Zuko guesses it’s a new reaction, at least. It’s still a shitty one. “I’m sorry that my gender identity and entire sense of self aren’t exciting enough for you,” he hisses, anger rising in his throat.

Sokka’s eyes widen, and he seems to realize his mistake. “Shit, _no,_ that’s not what I— _Fuck,_ I’m sorry, I’m fucking this up majorly. Let me start over,” he says, sounding regretful. He looks Zuko in the eye, serious and unwavering. “What I’m trying to say is— It won’t be a big deal. It’s a total non-issue, in case that’s something you were worried about. It doesn’t really change anything for me, for us. Working together.”

“Okay,” Zuko replies, still wary. The words Sokka is saying are good, technically — he’s just not sure yet if he can believe that he means them. But Sokka’s apparently not done talking.

“Like, If you’re a guy, then you’re a guy, and that’s all there is to it,” Sokka continues, tone and eyes so full of sincerity that Zuko feels it wash over him like a wave. “I promise I’m not gonna be a dick about it. I mean, not the way I was when I put my whole foot in my mouth just now,” he says, cringing. “Sorry about that, I wasn’t trying to be dismissive. I mean it when I say it’s cool.”

Zuko doesn’t know what else to say. “...Okay.” 

“But also, uh. I appreciate you telling me. It can’t have been easy, coming out to someone you’ve only just met,” Sokka tells him with a reassuring smile. “Thank you for trusting me with this. It’s… I’m happy to know this about you, because it helps me know you better. And I _want_ to know you better,” he says, but then quickly adds, “So we can fight better together, I mean.”

Zuko’s eyes scan his face cautiously. “So you don’t want to back out? Of being my copilot?”

“Uh, _what?_ No, why would I do that?” Sokka frowns in confusion. “We’re compatible, and we’re getting along, so far. Right? I feel like it’s going okay, between us… It’s like I said, this doesn't really change anything,” he says, then frowns again, looking a little sad. “Were you... Were you really expecting me to—”

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing someone has done after I told them,” Zuko says flatly.

“... _Zuko,_ ” Sokka breathes, horrified. “Fuck, I’m sorry—” 

“No, stop that. Stop looking at me like that,” Zuko cuts him off, annoyed and exhausted. He presses the lift button again, and they start moving. “It’s fine — _I’m fine._ Seriously.” 

Sokka crosses his arms. “Okay, fine, just— Can you at least tell me _who_ was an asshole to you about this so I can kick their ass?”

“ _Sokka,_ ” Zuko says, averting his eyes, somewhere between uncomfortable and touched. Sokka’s kind of overdoing the support now, in his opinion, but it seems sincere, at least. It makes something warm and traitorous stir in his chest, and he has to fight to stop his lips from quirking up.

“I’m serious! We’re partners now, you and I, and from my understanding that means we have to have each other’s backs,” Sokka says, resting a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “So, I got yours, man, just tell me who to deck for you. I know you could definitely do it yourself, _obviously,_ but that’s not the _point_ here.”

Yeah, there’s no way he’s talking about Ozai to Sokka right now. _That_ particular can of worms can wait for the drift. “You can start with a couple of the PPDC doctors, at the Academy. Getting my physicals always sucked.”

The lift finally reaches their level, and the doors open with a heavy clang. They walk out into the stark corridor together, heading towards the quarters section of the Shatterdome.

“ _Seriously?_ That’s just messed up,” Sokka says, surprising Zuko with how genuinely indignant he sounds. “You’d think they’d get over themselves, seeing as there’s a whole ass _war_ going on.”

“Yeah. You’d think that,” Zuko echoes, scratching his head awkwardly. “But, um. Thanks, by the way. For being cool about this.”

Sokka bumps his shoulder against Zuko’s companionably, smiling at him. “Don’t worry about it, man,” he says. “We’re good. _You’re_ good.”

Zuko hesitates. “You don’t... Aren’t there any questions you want to ask me?” Better get it out of the way while they’re on the subject. 

Sokka looks at him with confusion. “Like what? Is there anything I should be asking? Wait— Your name, should I call you something else?”

“Uh, no, it’s— Please just call me Zuko. I meant questions like— People like to ask stuff,” he says, looking ahead as they walk. The corridor they’re in right now is thankfully empty. “Like ‘when did you _know?’_ or ‘what’s your _real_ name?’ or ‘have you had _the surgery?’_. That kind of thing,” he says, unable to keep the irritation from his voice.

“That’s... Kinda rude though, right? None of this stuff seems like anyone’s business to me?” Sokka says with a frown. “But— Oh no, wait. I’m... _I'm_ going to know this stuff, aren’t I. When we drift. That’s— That’s a _lot,_ Zuko. I’m... Are you sure you’re cool with that?”

Zuko glances at him, at his expression full of concern for him. Sokka is making himself very difficult to look at. “You’re forgetting that I’ve done this before. And yeah, it sucks, but it comes with the territory. It’s the same sacrifice every pilot makes,” he says, hoping he sounds as confident as his words. Truthfully, Zuko’s terrified, and full of preemptive shame. But Sokka doesn’t need to know that. “What you said earlier — about how everyone’s got stuff, and how the drift is a trust fall... You’re right. And, honestly, I... I feel a lot better about drifting with you now that I know you won’t...”

_Turn me away._

“...Go on a transphobic rampage?” Sokka quips, flashing him a small smirk.

Zuko snorts. “Yeah, something like that.”

“I’m glad. That you feel that way, I mean. Though, honestly, you really need to raise your standards, dude. I'm just being decent which is like, the bare minimum,” Sokka says, throwing an arm around Zuko’s shoulders and giving him a friendly squeeze. “Expect more for yourself, you deserve that.”

The combination of the weight of Sokka’s words and the weight of Sokka’s arm threaten to pull Zuko under, drowning him in a powerful emotion he can’t even name. It fills his chest and lungs painfully, and yet he doesn’t want it gone. When Sokka drops his arm, it feels like a loss.

“So I'm assuming Toph knows?” he asks, light and curious, when Zuko doesn’t say anything. “Since you’ve known each other for so long, I mean.”

“Yeah, she knows,” he replies, his voice subtly raw, but at least he’s able to speak again. “She was only about nine when I first came out, but she was... Aggressively supportive.”

Sokka laughs. “I can imagine that.”

“Her, Mai and my uncle basically got me through the whole thing,” Zuko looks down at the floor as they walk, with a fond, distant expression, “I don’t know if I’d have made it without them.”

“Mai?” Sokka asks with a tilt of his head.

“Another childhood friend,” Zuko explains, turning to him. “Mai Liu. She’s a pretty famous pilot now.”

Sokka makes an exaggerated face like he’s thinking, trying to remember if he’s heard her name before. It looks ridiculously dorky, and Zuko feels himself smile involuntarily.

“Right, I forgot you’re a Jaeger nerd,” he says, teasing. “She pilots Razor Nimble.”

Sokka’s face illuminates with recognition. “Oh! Razor’s awesome. Super fast Jaeger.”

“That’s the one. Mai’s copilot Ty Lee also grew up with us. Though she was more my sister’s friend.” Every time Zuko thinks about Mai and Ty Lee, and how they’ve been together since even before the Academy, he feels a pang of longing and envy. Sokka had guessed earlier that dating someone you drift with would be intense, probably to the point of discomfort — but they’d always seemed very happy together. Happy, strong, united by unparalleled intimacy. Zuko is deeply ashamed of how much he craves that. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he says, feeling self-conscious.

“It’s okay, I asked,” Sokka says with a shrug. “Plus, I like hearing you talk. It means I'm not the one filling the silence for once.”

Zuko smirks at him, raising his eyebrow. “You? Talkative? I hadn’t noticed.”

Sokka rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “ _Ha-ha,_ okay, you jerk, I already roasted myself, you don’t have to roast me too.”

“I'm sorry, I'll be sure to ask permission before roasting you next time.”

“As you should!”

They both notice at the same time that they’ve arrived at the door to Zuko’s quarters. Zuko hadn’t been paying that much attention to where they were going, but Sokka must have been leading them here this whole time. Which meant he already knew the way to Zuko’s room. The thought makes Zuko’s stomach flutter for some reason.

“I... This is me,” Zuko says when they stop in front of his door. He realizes then that he feels hesitant to say goodbye.

Sokka shifts on his feet, looking at him with a similar hesitation — if Zuko’s not imagining it, projecting. “Right.”

Zuko looks around the corridor, hiding his hands in his pockets — a gesture of self-protection, grounding — then turns back to Sokka. “I, um. I had a good time, today. Thanks for showing me around and... And for listening. And being cool about the whole... Well, everything.”

“I had a good time, too,” Sokka says with a smile, soft and tentative, but true. “I think we’ll make a good team. If you ever, uh... Want to see some more local sights, I'm your guy,” he offers, rubbing the back of his neck, “Just let me know.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Sokka begins to step away, walking backwards, without turning away from Zuko. Almost like he’s unwilling to. “G’night, Zuko.” 

“Night,” Zuko answers quietly.

He waits for Sokka to disappear around the corner to finally turn around and unlock his door with his badge. His heart is beating unnaturally fast considering _nothing is actually happening._ They’d only said goodbye to each other, nothing more, but Zuko feels like— like something _else_ had been shifting underneath, an unnamed tension.

Zuko throws his parka on the bed and leans down to unlace his boots, hands trembling, still trying to slow his heart. If parts of today had already seemed bizarrely date-like to Zuko’s desperate, tragically inexperienced heart, then their goodbye just now fit the script to a T. Sokka had walked him to his door, as if delivering him safely home; they’d both said the standard ‘I had a good time’, a staple of date endings; Sokka had made a vague implication, left hanging, that they could do this again some other time if Zuko wanted, as if hoping for a second date.

Not to mention the way he’d looked at Zuko, like— like he actually _didn’t_ want to look away. Which is, obviously, absurd and ridiculous, Zuko thinks as he looks in the mirror after washing his face, water droplets running down from his fringe and into the grooves of his scar — he’s not exactly pleasant to look at.

That ‘tension’ isn’t real. Zuko can only be making it up in his head. He really shouldn’t be reading too much into any of it. Sokka’s just being nice, and trying to make their partnership work. Either way, he’s too good to be true, too good to happen to him.

Zuko flops down on his bed, hiding his face in the thin pillow. _Is this really all it takes? Are you that desperate and lonely? Come on, Zuko._

And the truth is, he is. He is that lonely. Lonely for something that’s not meant for him, never meant for him. That’s the only reason he’s doing this, overthinking his interactions with Sokka, in search of something that’s not really there. Constructing a non-platonic narrative out of thin air.

Besides, he distinctly remembers Sokka himself dispelling the notion of having any interest in him, when he’d foolishly, embarrassingly allowed himself for half a second to believe the possibility. _‘Not trying to make a pass at you. That’d be weird.’_ Yeah, it _would_ be weird, wouldn't it. At first Zuko had thought he’d meant it in a homophobic, ‘no homo, bro’ kind of way, but then he’d made it clear that it was just about _Zuko._ Sokka’s bi, just not into him — and why would he be, anyway?

Yeah, no. Zuko’s conjecturing and projecting is only a symptom of a pointless, desperate yearning for what he can’t have.

And none of it is helped at all by the way Sokka had responded to Zuko coming out to him. One more punch he’d rolled with, stumbling at first but recovering with disarming, heartfelt grace. Zuko isn’t sure what exactly he’d been expecting from him, what kind of reaction, but the apparently unconditional support — _‘Just tell me who to deck for you.’_ / _‘Expect more for yourself, you deserve that.’_ — had definitely not been on the list. It’s honestly kind of overwhelming. Zuko doesn’t really know what to do with it, where to put it.

At least he can be sure that if Sokka’s interest had been at zero before, it’s now for sure in the negatives. Zuko will just have to accept that, and stop entertaining this stupidly hasty infatuation he’s developed. Sokka is his copilot, his partner, and that’s all he’ll ever be.

A friendship is the most he can hope for — and it doesn’t seem as far out of reach as it had seemed before. That alone is already a lot more than he should expect, or even want.

It should be more than enough.

* * *

Zuko’s revelation changes very little for Sokka. At most it means he has some googling to do, so he can avoid saying or doing anything stupid or that might hurt his copilot. Being better informed would be good in general, so Zuko doesn’t feel like he has to hand-hold him through it and explain everything.

Other than that, nothing is really different. Zuko is Zuko, and being trans is just a part of who he is. Just one more thing Sokka is learning about him, along with everything else.

Sokka’s attraction to him hasn’t changed either. If anything, the fact that Zuko had trusted him with this, bravely telling him face to face instead of waiting for the drift, had just made Sokka that much more drawn to him. It’s the kind of trust that strengthens any bond. Sokka wants to be worth that trust.

He wants to be able to make Zuko feel safe and accepted, unquestionably. Especially since that’s clearly not been his general experience so far.

That’s why he spends his evening chilling in bed with his tablet, reading up on gender identity and transition, absorbing guides titled _‘How To Support Your Trans Friend After They Come Out To You’._ He’s quickly swallowed by the vortex of YouTube recommendations, watching one video after another of other trans men talking about their experiences, trying to learn from the source.

His finger hovers hesitantly over the thumbnail of a video of a trans guy and his cis boyfriend answering questions about their relationship. No harm in being curious, he thinks, biting his lip and finally tapping the screen. It’s not like it applies to them in any way, but more information is always better, he tells himself.

In the end, watching the video might not have been his most brilliant idea, because it leaves him full of a vague, completely unjustified yearning that he’s not at all entitled to. Sokka has literally just met Zuko, and he’s already crushing way too hard. He _really_ needs to cool it already, before it gets out of his control completely.

_What am I doing?_ Sokka thinks, closing the tab and quickly brushing the feeling aside. He’s getting distracted. The _actually_ important thing is that he feels a little better equipped to be a good, supportive partner to Zuko. As a _copilot,_ not— He means _professionally._ Obviously.

He also means as a friend, too, if Zuko wants that. Sokka certainly does. The idea of not having Zuko’s friendship somehow already feels like a loss.

They’ve spent very little time together so far, but it’s enough for Sokka to feel like he’d definitely enjoy hanging out with him more, beyond their pilot duties. Maybe they both would, he thinks, remembering the way Zuko had listened to him ramble about whatever, and seemed actually, genuinely interested, instead of faking it out of politeness or something. Or the way he’d laughed at things Sokka said, or groaned at his bad pun. He’d seemed to be enjoying himself, enjoying talking to Sokka — when they weren’t discussing the heavier topics, at least.

Zuko’s own sense of humor — dry, understated, unexpected — had taken Sokka by surprise. The guy is _funny,_ in a very particular way, and it had broken through and shattered that wooden, stiff image he’d projected at first. Not that he isn’t still pretty socially awkward — he is, and it’s _cute,_ in Sokka’s humble bisexual opinion — but he’s not humorless or boring. Zuko is _fun_ to talk to.

The fact that his reasoning for coming back, for wanting to pilot again, is so closely aligned with Sokka’s own also leads him to think that maybe they’ll get along beyond the superficial. A genuine, deeper connection would obviously be beneficial for their partnership, but Sokka also selfishly just hopes they might have it for its own sake. Sokka has friends, but he doesn’t really have a _best_ friend. And he doesn’t think he’d mind if that were to be Zuko someday.

He doesn’t really know what Zuko thinks of him yet, or how he feels, but, well — he _did_ say he’d had a good time, right? If he meant it — and Sokka does believe he did; after all, he’d been so truthful about other, much more serious things today — then this hope for a true friendly relationship outside of the Pod might not be one-sided, after all.

In any case, as a friend or just a partner, Sokka wants to make sure Zuko knows that he has him in his corner. Gender-wise and otherwise.

* * *

The next morning, Zuko seeks out his uncle to talk to him about his run-in with Azula at the temple. His encounter with her had stayed in the back of his mind, a low hum of dread, and he knows he can’t just ignore it. The thought of her so deeply entrenched in the Kaiju worshipping faith is honestly terrifying — the BuenaKai’s beliefs are known to be radical and apocalyptic, calling for the extermination of all humankind for its corruption, and deifying the monsters as the righteous scourge, assigning them a holy purpose. Who knows what they could be capable of?

At the same time, Zuko wonders if he could have somehow prevented this, prevented his sister from seeking haven among dangerous zealots. Seeking _family._ It’s not like he’d left her any options. Zuko still has Iroh, but who does Azula have?

So Zuko tells his uncle everything; tells him about the temple downtown, about the robes, about her speech and her refusal to leave. Iroh listens silently, deep in thought, rubbing his beard with his fingers. They walk the corridors together as Zuko explains, keeping his voice low.

“It is indeed very worrying,” Iroh says, tone grave. “Thank you for telling me about this, Zuko.”

“I think she needs help, Uncle,” Zuko tells him. “I just don’t know _how_ to help her, what to do.”

Regardless of how cruel and spiteful she could be, regardless of how much she’d hurt him in the past, Azula is still his sister. His little sister, who’d ask him to read her the same story book over and over when they were little, especially after their mother died; who would come crying to him after a nightmare, dragging her feet to protect her pride, because she’d known even then that their father would never provide her any comfort. His sister, who would aim vaguely transphobic barbs at him, but had never called him his deadname ever again after he’d first told her, even after Ozai had kicked him out and she’d had every reason to not defy him too.

Azula is complicated, but it would be very hypocritical of Zuko to begrudge her that.

He and Iroh are halfway through the corridor to Zuko’s quarters when Sokka jogs up to them from the other direction, a brilliant, excited smile on his face.

“Hey, Zuko!” he calls, only then seeming to notice Iroh’s presence, dropping the smile. “Oh, sorry. I'm interrupting. I’ll come back later.”

“No, no, Ranger Nukapiak, it’s alright,” Iroh says kindly, patting Zuko on the back with a knowing smile. “We were finished already. Zuko is all yours.” He turns to face Zuko, who flushes and gives him an embarrassed, half-hearted glare. Zuko knows the word choice isn’t accidental, he just doesn’t know how his uncle _knows._ Iroh looks at him seriously, though, not forgetting their conversation. “Don’t worry, we will sort this out,” he tells him.

“Thanks, Uncle.”

“Sir,” Sokka says with a nod as Iroh walks away, leaving them alone. He turns to Zuko then, the smile from before finding its way back onto his lips. 

(Zuko really shouldn’t be looking at Sokka’s lips — but his eyes are a trap too. A trap he’s really tempted to get caught in.)

“Come on,” Sokka gestures with his head, barely containing his excitement. “I wanna show you something.”

* * *

Sokka tries not to walk too fast as he escorts Zuko to the prime viewing spot for his reveal, looking back multiple times to check if he’s following him alright. (He is, every time.) His stomach is tied in such elaborate knots of both anticipation and nerves that he’s not sure if he’ll be able to untangle them later. He just can’t wait for Zuko to see her, now that she’s almost ready. He clearly isn’t as big a fan of Jaegers as Sokka is — then, again not many people are — but he hopes he’ll like her all the same.

Fuck, he really hopes Zuko will like her.

Sokka leads him out onto one of the mezzanines that overlook the expansive hangar of the Shatterdome, and they slowly approach the railing together. There, right in front of them, gigantic and beautiful in her icy gray-blues and deep reds — _there she is._

“Is this...?” Zuko turns his head to look at him, eyes wide.

“Yep,” Sokka says, smiling proudly, soft around the eyes. “That’s our Jaeger.”

Zuko turns his attention back to the robot, closing the distance to lean against the railing. Sokka joins him, resting his elbows on it, torn between admiring the result of years of his work and watching Zuko’s face in profile as _he_ admires it. Zuko is silent, just looking, an unreadable expression on his face. Sokka feels his stomach twist in another nervous knot again.

“They’re, uh, they’re still adding some finishing touches,” he says, eager to break the silence, “I had a couple things changed last minute after we got paired up to, you know, suit the both of us. New paint job, too. Everyone at J-Tech kinda wants my head now.”

Zuko chuckles, still looking at her. Maybe that means he likes her?

“She’s a Mark-5, brand new. All digital, too, so. No radiation risk,” he continues, because if Zuko won’t say anything then he might as well geek out a little bit. “She’s got the latest I-16 Plasmacasters, obviously, but I also gave her — and you’re gonna like this — I gave her the DB6 Retractable Sword, but like, doubled. Double swords.” 

Zuko finally looks at him, a curious, mildly confused look on his face. Sokka squirms under it, and stands up straight again.

“You like to dual wield, right?” he says, fiddling nervously with his ear piercings. “I, uh, I looked you up, kinda. Not in like a _weird_ way, just, your techniques and fighting styles. So I could incorporate them in the design too.”

Zuko blinks at him, and Sokka wants to scream. “I also! Came up with something that’s pretty cool, a total Sokka original, and she’s the only Jaeger that has it. Or, well, hopefully the first and not the last, but— Boomerang drones. That’s— They come back. They drop the K-Stunner rockets and come back to reload. When I was designing her—”

“You— Wait, _you_ designed it?” Zuko cuts in, finally connecting the dots. _“All of it?”_

He’s staring at Sokka, completely astonished — golden eyes wide and intense, reflecting the welding sparks that bounce off their Jaeger. It makes Sokka’s heart flip in his chest, and he swallows and looks away in embarrassment, unable to stop his lips from quirking up.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, scratching his jaw awkwardly. “Been working on her design on and off for a couple years, so she’s kinda my baby. But uh, it’s not _that_ big of a deal, really...”

“It’s— Sokka, it’s a huge deal! I can’t believe you designed _a whole Jaeger_ from scratch. This is amazing,” Zuko says, an awed, disbelieving smile slowly appearing on his face. “You’re... You’re a genius.”

The wonder in Zuko’s tone is almost too much for Sokka to bear, and his voice breaks when he speaks. “Well, not from _scratch,_ I mean, the basic schematics for Jaegers are—“

“Sokka, I needed to use my fingers for basic subtraction the other day, this is just… Extremely impressive to me. Just take the compliment.”

“Yeah, okay,” he concedes, feeling his face burn and his heart squeeze in his chest from the praise. “Um, thanks. I’m glad you like her.”

Somehow having Zuko’s approval of their Jaeger means so much more than Sokka had anticipated. It feels like a hot burst of pride blooming in his chest, but also like relief, soothing and gentle. A release. Zuko is impressed with his work — impressed with _him._ Sokka has done something good enough.

“It’s beautiful,” Zuko says, turning to admire their Jaeger again. “What’s it called?”

_“She,”_ Sokka corrects, leaning against the railing too, mirroring Zuko, “doesn’t really have an official name yet. I, uh, gave her a temp name in the design phase, but... Let’s just say naming things isn’t my strong suit.”

Zuko eyes him with a small smile. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Ehh...” Sokka makes a face and tilts his head from side to side, considering. “I called her Boom-Boom Lady.”

Zuko’s smile widens instantly. “Boom-Boom Lady? Really?”

“Shut up, okay? I had to call her _something_.” 

“I thought Jaeger names were always just two words.”

Sokka shrugs defensively. “Boom-Boom is one word.”

“Uh-huh,” Zuko says, his amused, lop-sided smile reaching his eyes. Sokka has to look away.

“Yeah, so. That’s why I was hoping you could name her.”

Zuko’s smile slips from his face. “Me?”

“She’s yours too, now,” Sokka tells him, turning his body to face him and leaning his elbow on the railing. “It would be only fair if you got to pick her name.”

Zuko frowns. “Sokka... I couldn’t, she’s _your_ project, your _baby—”_

“Dude,” Sokka says, poking Zuko on the shoulder, “I’m serious. _Please_ name her. My naming problem is chronic. When I was a kid I named my moose plushie _Foo Foo Cuddly Poops.”_

Zuko raises his eyebrow with a small smirk. “Cute. How old were you?”

“Four...” Sokka trails off, then cringes, “...teen?”

Zuko’s laugh is soft and raspy, like his voice, but much brighter. Like a flame, Sokka thinks, warming him all over. “Okay,” Zuko says, a hint of laughter still in his voice. “I’ll try to think of something, then.”

“ _Thank_ _you_.”

Zuko turns to the Jaeger again, eyes roaming her towering form. “She really is amazing, though,” he says with a firm sincerity, as if needing Sokka to know he means it.

Sokka sighs happily, crossing his arms over the railing and resting his head. “Isn’t she?”

He takes his time to admire the technological marvel in front of them, the mechanical creature he’d built in his head over and over before it even made it from blueprint to production. The humanoid shape, with narrow hips and wide, imposing shoulders, made asymmetrical by the addition of a pointed pauldron on one side; the ridges down the back, almost lizard-like, hiding the one-of-a-kind drones; the powerful fists that sheathe the retractable swords, now painted red up to the elbows to match the new color scheme; the elegant, elongated head, with the two triangular shapes extending upwards on each side — which Sokka likes to call wolf ears in his mind.

It feels incredible — and so surreal — to see what had started as an impossible idea in his chaotic brain now stand so solid and tangible in front of him.

“Now I’m kind of afraid I’ll break her or something.”

Sokka blinks at Zuko’s admission, pulled from his thoughts. He considers it for a moment before replying. “You will,” he says, still looking at his creation, and Zuko turns to him in surprise. _“We_ will. I mean, that’s kind of inevitable, right? No Jaeger ever comes out of a fight unscathed or intact. They don’t really have to be indestructible, they’re not built to be. They just have to do what they have to do, which is punch hard and punch well, and keep their pilots safe. There wouldn’t be any point to building her and then keeping her away from the action, just so she’d stay whole.”

He stands up straighter again, feeling Zuko’s eyes on him. “In a way she’s just like us. She has her job to do. Ending up a little bit broken is just an occupational hazard.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything, just watches Sokka for a long moment. Sokka keeps his eyes forward while he squirms under the scrutiny, feeling a shiver run through him — but it isn’t unpleasant. It’s actually the exact opposite. Having Zuko’s focus on him like this has all of Sokka on alert, as if he’s waiting for something. He’s just not sure what.

Finally, Zuko looks away, facing forward again, and Sokka relaxes.

“How about... Draco Orion,” Zuko tries, “They’re—“

“Constellations, I know,” Sokka interrupts, stunned. He finally turns to look at Zuko, smiling and full of wonder because, _wow._ Astronomy references? Zuko is— The name is perfect.

Zuko looks at him in surprise, eyes wide, and Sokka catches himself, looking away. “I like it. See, I knew it’d be better if you named her.”

“I thought, because ‘the Dragon’ and ‘the Giant Huntsman’... It seems appropriate,” Zuko explains tentatively. “Shen, the Chinese constellation with the same stars as Orion, is a warrior, too. It fits.”

Sokka brings a hand to his chest dramatically, performatively emotional. “That’s so nerdy. I love it,” he says, voice wavering as if in tears. He quickly drops the act then, gesturing solemnly to the Jaeger before them. “Okay. I officially dub thee Draco Orion, greatest Jaeger ever built,” he declares, then turns to Zuko again with a smile, offering his fist for him to bump. ''The three of us are gonna hunt the hell out of those alien dragons.”

Zuko accepts the fist bump, smiling with his eyes. “They won’t know what hit them.”

Sokka sighs again as he looks up at Draco Orion, finally complete with her name. A name that, in a way, claims her for both of them — together. “I feel like a proud dad,” he says. “Look at her. That’s our _child,_ Zuko.”

“If we get divorced I’m fighting for custody,” Zuko quips dryly, smirking.

Sokka mock-gasps, scandalized. “Is that how you treat the father of your child? Your giant, highly weaponized robot child? You _know_ my body was never the same after the pregnancy.”

He watches as Zuko is slowly overtaken by laughter, unable to suppress it — the way it bubbles up from within him, light and joyful. “Oh my god, you’re such an idiot.”

Sokka doesn’t want it to stop. “Nuh-uh, I seem to recall you saying about five minutes ago that I’m a genius. No take-backsies.”

“You can be both an idiot _and_ a genius. You can be two things,” Zuko manages, laughter still in his voice. 

“Well, true,” Sokka concedes, incapable of tearing his eyes away from Zuko. “I _am_ kinda the master of being two things. I’m ambidextrous, bilingual, _and_ bisexual. I'm a bi pilot. A _‘bilot’,_ if you will,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows.

(Sokka realizes that it’s the second time he mentions being bisexual to Zuko. He truly is the king of subtlety, isn’t he.)

Zuko groans at the joke. “That was awful. You’re _awful,”_ he says, but he’s still smiling at Sokka, loose and soft, seemingly having forgotten to keep up his trademark restrained, brooding disposition. Come to think of it, Zuko has been smiling and laughing a lot more than Sokka had originally expected when they’d first met. If that’s because of Sokka, then he’s definitely doing something right.

“I’m actually hilarious, thank you very much.”

They stand there silently for a moment, side by side, taking in the armored titan they’re meant to share, become one with. Sokka pictures the two of them, strapped to the rigs inside Draco’s Conn-Pod, moving in perfect sync, three-as-one — all of the pieces in place. A chimerical paladin.

“You lied to me before,” Zuko says softly beside Sokka, startling him. “You said you were only ‘pretty okay’ at this kind of thing.”

The non-sequitur throws him off for a moment, and he frowns in confusion. “I wasn't lying.”

“Then you were being way too modest,” Zuko turns to him, serious. “You’re clearly very good at it, Sokka.”

Sokka avoids his eyes, shifting on his feet and scratching the back of his neck. “I... It’s really not...”

“Can I ask you something?” Zuko interrupts, brows drawn. “Why did you decide to leave J-Tech? You’re obviously passionate about it, and talented, too. I don’t get why you would willingly choose piloting instead.”

Sokka heaves a sigh, leaning his elbows on the railing again, looking down at the hangar floor — at all the engineers and workers moving back and forth across the smooth epoxy-covered area. “Remember when you told me you were sick of doing nothing when you could be out there fighting? I felt the same way.”

“This isn’t nothing, though. Jaeger engineers are essential. They’re still part of the war effort.”

“Yeah, but... It’s not the same,” Sokka says quietly. “Pilots are the ones risking their lives to protect everyone, the ones putting everything on the line, mind and body, to keep everyone else safe. It didn’t feel right, staying behind the scenes when I knew I could be doing that, doing _more_ . I felt like I wasn’t… I wasn’t _doing enough_ _.”_ He pauses, then gestures vaguely to Draco with one hand. “And this? Sure, I can do it, and it’s the kind of thing I would’ve wanted to be doing right now if there wasn’t a war going on. But, well, there _is_. And I can’t just cling to the dream I had in a completely different world, you know? It would just be selfish of me.”

Zuko mirrors him now, leaning on his elbows too — an empathetic, equalizing move. “Dream?” he asks softly, eyeing Sokka.

“Ah, yeah. I, uh…” Sokka hesitates, smiling ruefully. “Remember that childhood friend I mentioned, the one I lost? She... Her name was Yue. We...” He huffs a sad little laugh. “We promised to go to the moon together when we were little. It’s kind of a dumb little kid dream, but. Yeah. I always wanted to work for NASA. Aerospace engineering, and stuff. Literal rocket science.” He glances at Zuko, and finds him listening attentively. Sokka feels childish and greedy to even be mentioning this. “I was gonna go to school, y’know, maybe try for an internship at the PSCA in Kodiak, and go from there.”

“Maybe you still can.”

Sokka snorts. Now that’s optimism. Not something he’d been expecting from his ‘dark prince’ of a copilot. “Yeah, if we survive. Maybe,” he says, trying not to sound too bitter. “What about you? What would you be doing right now, if we lived in a Breach-less timeline?”

Zuko doesn’t respond right away, instead looking down the way Sokka had done before, thinking. When he eventually speaks, there’s a lost quality to his voice, an emptiness.

“...I honestly don’t know. This has always been what I was supposed to do, even before the war. My father...” he trails off, frowning to himself. “I was expected to join the military, and then eventually take over the company. K-Day just redirected me to a different kind of service, I guess.” He turns to look at Sokka, golden eyes roaming his face, unreadable. “I never really had a dream like yours.”

“There was nothing you wanted to do? Nothing for yourself?”

He shakes his head, looking away again. “No. There wasn’t really... Much room for that,” he says vaguely. Sokka can already guess that most, if not all of the memories from Zuko’s childhood he’ll end up accessing when they drift will most likely not be happy ones. “I’m good at being a pilot, though. At fighting, at least. It’s the only thing I really know how to do.”

Sokka shifts closer to elbow him in the side playfully, giving him a reassuring grin. “C’mon, I doubt that. I'm sure you’ve got hidden talents in there, somewhere. You probably don’t even notice.”

Zuko just hums ambiguously. Alright, Sokka will take the challenge.

“That thing you did, earlier? With the constellations and the mythology and stuff?” he says, pressing his shoulder against Zuko’s to make sure he can’t ignore him, “When you said the names I was thinking of the literal celestial bodies, the physics, the science of it. I wasn’t thinking about the symbolism. But you were. That’s a talent.”

Zuko looks at him from the corner of his eye, hiding behind his fringe. Sokka would think he was blushing if the dim lighting on the mezzanine weren’t so deceiving. “If you say so. You can’t build a Jaeger with that, though.”

“Maybe, but you can name one.”

Zuko huffs, and smiles wryly. “Wanna trade?”

Sokka shoves him with his elbow again, making him laugh — the same raspy laugh from before, the one that makes Sokka’s chest tighten and his own lips echo the shape of it. That laugh, Sokka thinks, could very well end up being what does him in, if he lets it.

And he really, really shouldn’t let it.

* * *

Sokka suggests they head down to the floor level of the hangar, so they can see Draco Orion up close, from the ground. Zuko agrees, more due to Sokka’s own enthusiasm than a personal need to be overwhelmingly dwarfed by their shared battle machine. Standing next to a Jaeger’s foot has always made Zuko slightly uneasy; that’s when their true scale becomes most noticeable, shifting the context around them vertiginously, making everything seem tiny in comparison. Zuko can’t say he’s a fan.

But Sokka is excited, and very hard to say no to — especially now that Zuko knows he’d designed their Jaeger himself. He’s still trying to absorb that, honestly. He can’t begin to imagine everything that goes into a project like that, all the calculations and physics and planning, and Sokka… Sokka had worked on it for years, because he loved it. He _loves_ it, and is good at it, too. Zuko, who had needed extensive tutoring to pass his Math and Math-adjacent classes, is simultaneously baffled and extremely impressed.

And, as reluctant as he is to let himself indulge in it, Zuko can’t help but find it attractive, too. Sokka has looks _and_ brains. _And_ a sense of humor. It’s honestly kind of annoying how unfair it is.

They walk out onto the hangar floor and head towards bay number 6, where Draco Orion is standing idle, like an imposing guardian statue, as she gets her final touch-ups and adjustments done. Sokka walks ahead and strikes up a conversation with a couple J-Tech officers working near her, while Zuko stays behind, stopping just before her enormous foot, roughly the size of a truck. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his uniform cargo pants and looks upwards, overcome with the sheer size of her. It’s a good thing his job is to be inside her Pod, her head, embodying her dimensions as his own, instead of on the outside, tiny and crushable.

A ringtone begins to play suddenly, mixing with the busy sounds of the Shatterdome around them. It pulls Zuko out of his near-megalophobic spiral, and he looks over as Sokka pulls his phone out of his pocket. Zuko watches as his eyebrows rise, and he accepts the call with a smile.

“Hey, Katara! What’s up?” Sokka greets, holding his phone in front of his face. Zuko can’t see the screen from where he is, and he really shouldn’t eavesdrop, but—

“Don’t ‘what’s up’ me,” Katara’s voice says, slightly muffled but still clear enough that Zuko can understand her. She sounds kind of mad. “You didn’t call me back after telling me about the trials! I thought something bad had happened!”

“Oh shit, you’re right. I'm sorry, I got distracted,” Sokka says apologetically. He glances at Zuko, then, which— Shit. Zuko quickly looks away, face warming, trying to disguise the fact that he’d been listening. “We, um— We’ve been kinda busy.”

“We? Does that mean you—”

“Hold on, there’s someone I need you to meet.” Sokka jogs up to Zuko with a grin on his face. “Hey, Zuko! Katara’s calling. Say hi!”

Zuko startles when Sokka moves behind him, throwing his arms around him and holding the phone horizontally in front of them, so that they’re both in frame. He can see his own panicked, frozen face on the screen — he looks really fucking dumb. Katara’s going to think her brother’s copilot is an idiot.

Katara herself, on the other hand, is looking at him expectantly. She and Sokka look a lot alike, Zuko notes.

“Uh, hi. Zuko here,” he says, voice miraculously not cracking, “It’s an honor to meet you, Katara.”

Sokka beams next to him on the screen. Zuko can feel the warmth of his face next to his, and of his body behind his. “We’re copilots!”

Katara’s face opens in a smile, genuine and kind-eyed. “That’s amazing, Sokka! I _told_ you you were just being stubborn. I knew you could do it,” she says with certainty. She turns to Zuko then, her expression a little more contained. “It’s nice to meet you too, Zuko. Also, my condolences.”

“What?” Zuko squeaks.

“I figure they’re in order considering you’ll be sharing a headspace with my brother. You can say goodbye to whatever peace of mind you might have had until now.”

Sokka rolls his eyes. “Don’t listen to her, man. She’s just jealous.”

“I appreciate the thought, but, um,” Zuko says, “If anything it’s Sokka’s peace of mind that’s at risk here.”

She squints at him thoughtfully. Zuko feels like he’s about to be dissected. “Interesting. Why do you say that?”

“Uh,” he replies, eloquently.

“He says that because he’s being a good partner and trying to spare me from your relentless sisterly teasing,” Sokka saves him, thankfully. _“I'm_ the eldest, I should be the one trying to embarrass _you.”_

“Unfortunately for you, you were born embarrassing,” she says, a small crooked smile on her lips, then turns to Zuko, “You’ll see what I mean when you two drift, Zuko. _So_ many childhood memories. There was this one time he—“

_“Alright,_ I think that’s enough of that, thank you very much! Let’s leave it for the drift, shall we?” Sokka frantically attempts to cover Zuko’s ears, but one of his hands is busy holding the phone. “Zuko here doesn’t need to hear any spoilers.”

“I don’t mind spoilers,” Zuko says, smiling. Sokka’s warm hand against the side of his face is making him a little lightheaded.

“Uh, _yes, you do,”_ Sokka insists with a pout. “Can we please move on from this? I somehow did not foresee you two ganging up on me. Big strategic failure on my part.”

Katara relents. “Fine, I’ll be merciful. I don’t have much time anyway, I just wanted to check up on you. I’m really happy for you, Sokka. And proud, too.” She grows serious then, suddenly. “Zuko.”

Zuko swallows. “Yeah?”

Her stare is piercing even through the phone screen. “You’re Sokka’s copilot now, which means you need to have his back. _At all times,_ got it?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“His life is in your hands. You have to take care of him for me. And don’t let him die out there, do you understand?” she warns, dead serious. “Because I _will_ make you regret it if you do.”

Zuko feels a chill run up his spine, but narrows his eyes in determination. “Got it.”

“Good,” she says, and then she’s smiling again. “Be safe, okay, Sokka?”

Sokka waves at her before the call disconnects. “You too! Bye!”

He unwraps himself from around Zuko and tucks his phone back in his pocket. Zuko feels very cold all of a sudden — and Katara’s warning still rings in his mind.

“...Your sister’s going to kill me,” he says.

Sokka smirks at him, unperturbed. “Nah, she’s just trying to scare you. She’s looking out for me, you know — she’s my sister.”

“Right.”

“I think she liked you, actually,” Sokka says, standing beside him, vaguely distracted as he looks up at Draco.

Zuko frowns in confusion. “Wh— Really?” He’d barely said anything; although, maybe that had helped, actually.

“Yeah! Trust me, I know her,” Sokka says, flashing him a smile. “She could’ve been _way_ worse.”

Oh. Great. That’s reassuring. Zuko’s not sure what ‘worse’ means in Katara’s case, and he doubts she could reach Azula levels of bad (well, _hopefully)_ , but something tells him he definitely should _not_ piss off his copilot’s sister. And given Zuko’s chronic knack for messing up, it seems like a very real possibility.

At the same time, her playful willingness to include him in making fun of her brother had felt strangely meaningful to Zuko — like acceptance, or maybe approval, even. Zuko knows that neither of them realize the weight of something like that for him.

He looks at Sokka as he looks at Draco, absorbed in whatever analytic daydream she inspires in him, and feels that this, all of this, is turning out to be of a much greater magnitude and significance than he’d expected. The upside and downside of being more emotionally present, more invested. Of caring more. He cares about what Katara thinks; he cares about what _Sokka_ thinks. A lot, actually.

Sokka is smiling up at their Jaeger, and Zuko finds himself smiling too, reflexively. Maybe it’s not so bad to feel dwarfed by something much larger, be it a Jaeger or a feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zuko: *is a literal trans man*  
> sokka: don’t misgender our giant robot please :-) she/her pronouns  
> zuko: *looks at the camera like on the office*
> 
> it’s a dang robot, sokka 🙄
> 
> the statue of the bear with a raven on its head that sokka mentions during their tour [is real, btw](https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm9B2E_Bear_and_Raven_Sculpture_Anchorage_AK)  
> icebox burgers is, unfortunately, not, however. _where_ can i go to eat something junky named after a kaiju, huh? an untapped market, right there


	5. our worlds so close, your skin to my bone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [‘see you’ by lady lamb](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DOqyjjv0M4)  
> content warnings for implied/referenced child abuse, ptsd flashbacks, one single line about needles, dissociation, derealization/depersonalization, general drift weirdness
> 
> this is it, lads. it’s time for them to share the braincell / get mindfucked (but not in the fun way)  
> also, our boy jet makes another appearance 🌾

It’s today.

The day of Draco Orion’s trial run, her dress rehearsal — when Zuko and Sokka will be drifting with each other for the first time. The day their heads will be pried open, minds laid bare so they can connect, coalesce. The day that Zuko has been simultaneously dreading and bracing himself for.

Zuko’s heart is in his throat as he paces in his room from end to end, restlessly running his hands through his hair. Technically, he should already be making his way to the drivesuit room by now — getting into his circuitry undersuit, waiting for the techs to attach the armor plates and spinal clamp — but his insides feel icy and constricted, like the contents of his ribcage have been sealed in a tight vacuum, a black hole of fear.

He’s been trying to ignore his apprehension about drifting with Sokka, to push it down, the low murmur in the back of his mind saying ‘ _he’s going to see you, see you and know you, all the ugly parts, all of your fuck-ups, he’s going to see what a mess you are_ ’. It’s the kind of thing he can’t afford to pay attention to, a demon he can’t afford to feed. It _can’t_ matter (and it does, more than it should, because it’s _Sokka_ , and Zuko is unfortunately actually invested in what he thinks now).

No, Zuko can’t let his fear of being seen so plainly and completely — opened up and rummaged through like a dead frog on a dissection tray — get in his way now. The imminence of their trial run is dredging it up, pushing it up to the surface, and it’s his job to bury it back down.

Zuko breathes in deeply, shakily, and tries to center himself. This is nothing new, nothing he hasn’t already gone through, he reminds himself. The fact that he can actually feel nervous about it this time around is actually a good thing — it means he’s no longer dead inside.

Sokka’s words about the drift, about the conscious choice to look at each other and not turn away, float around in his mind. He knows, with absolute certainty, that he’s ready to do that for him. Hopefully Sokka will be able to do the same for Zuko, in spite of everything. In spite of how hard Zuko will inevitably make it for him.

` _ “Draco Orion Neural Test. Commencing in 20 minutes.” _ `

He startles at the computer generated voice ringing out from the speakers in his quarters. Shit. He’s late. Sokka must be waiting for him already — suited up, strapped in, wondering where he is.

Zuko can’t let him down.

* * *

Zuko is running late.

It isn’t entirely a problem, since they have some time to spare still, but it does make Sokka wonder if everything’s okay. It seems extremely unlikely that Zuko would have changed his mind and just up and quit overnight, so it’s definitely something else. Maybe he’s nervous. Or maybe he just overslept — the late sunrise does take some getting used to.

(Or maybe it’s Sokka himself who Zuko is reluctant to drift with. Maybe Sokka had said something, or done something. Maybe Zuko had caught on to Sokka’s burgeoning crush on him, and now feels weird about linking minds with him — something that’s so, well. Inherently intimate. There’s no evidence for any of these theories, but they cross Sokka’s mind all the same.)

Since Zuko hasn’t shown up yet, Sokka goes into the drivesuit room alone, and is helped by the techs into the suit alone. They attach his chestplate, his spaulders, his bracers. The rigid polycarbonate pieces snap into place with a click and a hiss, shiny and smooth in the low light — a hi-tech exoskeleton.

It’s necessarily a tight fit, to maximise contact area between skin and synaptic circuitry, and Sokka moves his arms and shoulders a bit to stretch it out. It feels strange to wear one of these again after so long — both new and familiar at the same time.

Sokka can remember the cobalt blues of Aurora Huntress’s drivesuits, almost like a visual echo, a memory washing over the present. He lets it come and go, like a shudder. Right now, this feels different, with Draco. With Zuko. It’s a brand new suit, a brand new Jaeger, and a brand new copilot.

Well — not brand new, exactly. Zuko isn’t an inexperienced newbie. He’s a little scuffed, a little battered; not exactly mint condition. But neither is Sokka. They’re both coming back for round two, asking for more. Sokka concludes that they can only be masochists, both of them. Masochists with a too strong sense of duty, willing to put themselves in this position over and over — making themselves vulnerable in every way possible, to the monsters outside and to the other person in the room. That’s masochism, right there.

Sokka steps into Draco’s Conn-Pod for the first time, holding his helmet under his arm, his armored boots thunking against the floor. He takes a moment to look around it, enjoying the satisfaction of standing in the heart of his accomplishment (well, technically the head, and not the heart, but—). He heads to the right side of the Pod, standing beside the pedal platform.

“Setting harness for Test Mode,” he says, pressing a few buttons on the console. “Waiting for second pilot.” He watches as the rig descends from its idle position, whirring and clanking into place, and waits.

` _“Two pilots on board,”_` the computer announces not a minute after.

Sokka hears him before he sees him. He turns at the sound of Zuko’s steps, the same heavy, metallic sound his own had made, and— his heart stops.

Oh, _fuck_.

Zuko looks... Really good in his drivesuit. Stunning, even. He looks like he belongs in it, like he and the suit exist to complement each other, fulfill the same singular purpose. The hard, dark-gray armored plates emphasize the shape of his body, following alongside the muscles of his arms, torso and thighs, creating a powerful silhouette — that of a futuristic knight, or a dashing cosmonaut. Sokka swears there’s a spotlight following him; he just can’t seem to look away. The fact that he’s wearing _Sokka’s_ design makes it even sexier, somehow.

(Sokka _might_ actually have a semi right now — thank fuck his own codpiece makes it impossible to tell from the outside.)

“What?” Zuko asks self-consciously when he notices Sokka staring.

Sokka really needs to calm down if he doesn’t want Zuko to be blasted with his... _Appreciation_ of his physique in the suit when they drift in a couple of minutes.

“Nothing, you just…” he gestures to Zuko’s armored body, “The suit. It suits you.” _Haha, get it_ , Sokka thinks reflexively, because he’s an idiot.

Zuko doesn’t seem to care about how un-smooth his compliment had been. “Oh, uh. Thanks,” he says, looking down at himself briefly. “You too. I mean— yours. Your suit. Suits you, too. Um,” Zuko finishes, frowning at himself.

Okay, nevermind. Zuko wins the Awkwardness Olympics, fair and square. It really should not be this adorable.

“Thanks, man,” Sokka says sincerely, grinning. “Though, I kinda designed it, so. Would be kinda weird if I made it unflattering on myself, right?”

“Right.” Zuko pauses, hesitating. He hasn’t moved to the opposite motion rig to get strapped in. “Hey, uh. I’m gonna need to stay on the right side, my left is...”

Right! Obviously. Sokka feels like an inconsiderate jerk. “Oh, yeah, no problem,” he says, stepping away to switch places with him, and taking his place on the left side of the Pod. “I'm ambidextrous, remember? I’m good either way,” he flashes Zuko a smile, going for reassuring. He looks like he needs it right now.

If Sokka was nervous about drifting, Zuko looks terrified. He’s definitely trying to hide it, trying to act cool and collected; but Sokka can see it in the way he’s looking around nervously, eyes never stopping for too long on a single spot, or in the way he keeps uncomfortably changing the way he grips his helmet, as they wait for the technicians to connect them to the rigs. 

All that talk about how he wasn’t scared, about ‘ _the sacrifice every pilot had to make’_ , had apparently been pure bravado on his part.

Paradoxically, it makes Sokka feel calmer, more focused. It slots him neatly into the role of soother, caretaker. He’s always felt more confident taking care of others than himself. He eyes Zuko as he puts on his helmet, stepping into the pedal platforms. If his partner is in need of some encouragement, he doesn’t mind giving it to him.

“Hey,” he says gently, getting Zuko’s attention. “It’s just a trust fall, remember? I'm here to catch you. We’ll catch each other.”

He stretches out a hand towards him, both an offering and a promise. Zuko looks at his hand for a moment, then up at Sokka’s face, unsure. Sokka begins to feel like maybe he miscalculated, but then Zuko smiles, still timid but charged with a fresh determination. He reaches out and takes Sokka’s hand, meeting him halfway between their rigs. His eyes roam Sokka’s helmet-covered face, tense and resolute. Sokka squeezes his hand and smiles back at him, then winks, just to lighten things up. Zuko’s eyes widen slightly, but then he huffs a short laugh, his smile growing wider and looser, more sincere and spontaneous. _There we go_ , Sokka thinks, _much better_.

` _“Pilots on board and ready to connect,”_` the computer announces, pulling them back to the present. Zuko lets go of his hand so he can put on his helmet. The inside of it lights up, illuminating his face in red from below, giving him an otherworldly glow.

“Prepare for Neural Handshake,” the Marshal’s voice orders from LOCCENT over the comms. Sokka’s stomach flutters in anticipation.

“Initiating Neural Handshake,” Jin’s voice says, and Draco Orion slowly powers up around them, coming to life. She whirrs and clangs loudly, and her HUD lights up before them, bright and translucent. Just like Sokka had imagined it. _She lives_.

Sokka flips a few switches on the panel before them as the computer begins the countdown. He turns to look at Zuko, and finds him already looking his way.

( _...7, 6, 5…_ )

“Ready?” Sokka asks. Zuko nods to him, serious.

` _ “Neural Interface Drift initiated.” _ `

The computer’s voice sounds distant to Sokka’s ears as he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, bracing himself. Time for the less fun part.

( _...2, 1._ )

It feels the same every time: a held breath then a sharp pull, inwards and under. Like being forcefully submerged, sucked into an abstract whirlpool, sinking deeper; the drift the Charybdis to the Kaiju’s Scylla. _(One or the other, one or the other.)_

And then it opens — two minds floating, condensed and then expanded, the barrier between them dissolved to let in a flood, a parade of ghosts in shifting, washed-out blues. The memories come in rapid-fire flashes, overlapping and blending together, ethereal and dreamlike but still so real, so vivid.

The trick is to let them flow.

_...Kya sitting on the floor, braiding little Sokka’s hair,_

_while he does the same for an even littler Katara…_

_…Ursa and little Zuko sitting together,_

_feeding a family of ducks that swim in a pond…_

_...Sokka as a child, tools in hand,_

_taking a small radio apart to understand how it works…_

_…Zuko as a child, fists clenched and head bowed, trembling, as Ozai reprimands him_

_for shaming him with his less than satisfactory academic performance…_

_...Teenage Sokka and Katara at their mother’s funeral,_

_being held and comforted by their father…_

_…Teenage Zuko sitting on his bed in Iroh's home, holding a testosterone-loaded syringe_

_to his thigh, taking a deep breath before pushing the needle in…_

_...Sokka and Suki sitting cross-legged in front of each other in the Academy,_

_while she carefully applies eyeliner to his lids with a steady hand…_

_…Zuko and Jet sparring with each other in the Academy, each wielding two staves,_

_a wild grin on Jet’s face as Zuko brings him to his knees..._

_...Sokka in safety goggles, hunched over_

_an open panel of a Jaeger’s leg, handling a soldering iron…_

_…Zuko in front of the Jasmine Dragon, duffel bag hanging against his hip,_

_watching as Iroh locks up before they leave their home for Alaska…_

…And they’re back. Sokka and Zuko jolt forwards with a gasp as reality comes into focus again, sharp and corporeal, in full color. It takes a second for their heads to stop spinning.

` _“Right hemisphere, calibrated,”_` the computer says as they extend their arms and spread their fingers in sync, moving as one — right, then left. “` _Left hemisphere, calibrated.”_`

Draco Orion moves with them, her enormous, heavy limbs compelled into motion like a puppet pulled by strings. The three of them put their fists up, perfectly united.

` _ “Ready to activate the Jaeger.” _ `

“Alright, Draco,” Jin says over the comms, “Everything’s looking good.”

` _ “Pilot to Jaeger connection complete.” _ `

Draco and her pilots mime throwing a few punches experimentally, the metal of her arms and fists screeching and clanging loudly, echoing throughout the hangar. From inside her Conn-Pod, they can hear the distant sound of clapping — officers and workers applauding the successful Handshake. Sokka and Zuko and Draco lower their arms back to a neutral position, relief and triumph flowing through their connection.

` _ “Calibration complete.” _ `

* * *

The thing about the drift is that it’s not an instant, two-way download of every single one of both pilots’ memories directly into each other’s brains. That’s not really how it works. It’s more like opening a channel, establishing a path, allowing for thoughts and memories to pass through freely as they arise. It’s called a neural bridge for a reason.

It takes multiple drifts for two people to know each other like they know themselves. What comes through during the first time two pilots drift tends to be the things closest to the surface of their consciousness, the formative memories that remain clear as the day they happened, the events that altered their lives’ course. Things that are buried deeper or have been repressed take further drifts to come up.

That said, there’s still an element of randomness to it; hence, Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers — RABIT. (Sokka can appreciate the effort of whoever coined it to make an Alice in Wonderland reference.)

Chasing the RABIT means being seduced by a memory, whether by a nostalgic pull, or a need to suppress it. Or, a lot of the times — considering most people who walk into a Conn-Pod tend to be a walking collection of tragedies stapled together with the sheer will to survive — the seduction is more insidious; the siren call to indulge in reliving the worst day, the worst moment, to get stuck in the quicksand of trauma. Anyone can fall for it.

* * *

Sokka is about to open his mouth to ask LOCCENT for some system diagnostics, just for good measure, when something bright and blinding flashes before his and Zuko’s eyes. Before it fades completely, there’s a glimpse of a man’s face — Ozai Long, enraged and charging, grabbing them, and then—

Another bright flash, but this time it’s _fire_ and _heat_ and _burning flesh_ , and pure, searing pain. Both pilots jerk violently and wince together, ears ringing and left halves of their faces stinging, a pale echo of the real thing. And beneath all the physical sensations, there’s the emotional undercurrent — the shame, the guilt, the fear, the betrayal, the loneliness. The acute regression to the headspace of a child, branded forever as a disappointment.

` _ “Pilot out of alignment.” _ `

“Draco, you’re out of alignment,” Jin’s voice reaches them inside the Pod.

“It’s me,” Zuko says, teeth gritted, eyes clenched shut. ”I’m fine, just— give me a moment.”

Iroh’s voice reaches them too, grounding and reassuring. “Zuko, you can control it,” he says, “Just breathe and let it go.”

The echo of Zuko’s father slowly fades away, and the memory with it. But Sokka can feel something else trying to emerge, pulling at the back of their minds. Something that gradually builds around them, much more detailed and lifelike — another Conn-Pod.

Liberator Blue’s Conn-Pod. _Shit_.

The whole Pod shakes violently, knocking Sokka off balance. Colored lights flash alerts around them. Sokka’s no longer strapped to his rig — Jet is in his place instead, while he’s standing off to the side, untethered to anything.

He turns to look at Zuko. He looks different. Younger, and his hair inside his helmet is shorter. It’s closer to the Zuko that Sokka had seen in the videos and pictures. Sokka knows it’s only outwardly, though — inside is present Zuko, stuck inside a shell he’s long grown out of.

“Zuko, don’t let it pull you in,” Sokka urges him, “Focus on right now, not on the past!”

The Pod shakes again as Liberator wrestles with Catgator dangerously close to a populated area, its bioluminescent barbel whiskers whipping around in the air. Zuko and Jet move as one, punching the crocodilian Kaiju repeatedly in the head. It breaks free and roars at them in anger. Sokka braces himself against the back wall.

Zuko shows no sign that he heard him.

(“ _He’s chasing the RABIT!_ ” Sokka hears Jin’s frantic voice distantly, from somewhere outside of Zuko’s mental time capsule.)

“Hold tight, Liberator,” Sokka hears a LOCCENT operator over their Jaeger’s comms, “Lotus Conqueror is coming to your aid.”

“We don’t need backup,” Jet says. Sokka doesn’t know how, but he can tell something is off about him. “We’re doing fine over here.”

Sokka begins to edge closer to Zuko, still using the wall as support. “Zuko, listen to me,” he pleads with him again. “Don’t fall for it, okay, it’s just a memory. That’s all it is, something that happened before and can’t touch you anymore,” Sokka says, stopping right beside him. “It’s not real. None of it is real.”

He gets no response.

Beyond Liberator’s colorful HUD Sokka can see a wide-set, dark red and gold Jaeger with a lotus flower design on its shoulders get dropped by its Jumphawks behind Catgator. It draws the Kaiju’s attention, and it turns to claw at Lotus. The Jaeger raises its arms defensively.

“Zuko, Jet,” Sokka hears another voice through the comms — he recognizes it as Zuko’s cousin, Lu Ten, without ever having met him. It’s eerie, hearing the voice of a ghost. “We need to get it away from the city. They’re still evacuating,” he tells them, while Lotus attempts to drag Catgator in the opposite direction of the coastline. The Kaiju twists in its grip, overpowering it and dragging its claws deeply across Lotus’s chest, making sparks fly. The force of the blow pushes the Jaeger backwards. Catgator is free to continue on its path. Which seems to be towards a cluster of several buildings.

“Shit,” Sokka hears Zuko mutter beside him. “Jet, there’s still people in there. We need to stop it,” he says, but Jet doesn’t respond. Both Zuko and Sokka turn their heads to look at Jet simultaneously — reminding Sokka that they’re still connected, the ones who are actually drifting — and Jet is... 

Jet is frozen in place. His fists are up, clenched tight, and his face is twisted in a mix of rage, grief and paralyzing fear.

Suddenly, Sokka understands — Jet is chasing the RABIT mid fight.

(And what a nesting doll of trauma this is — Zuko chasing the memory of Jet chasing the memory of—)

Sokka sees Zuko assume the same position next to him, but he’s still conscious of his surroundings. “Jet! Jet, no, stay with me!” Zuko calls out to him, but Jet doesn’t hear him. He’s stuck seeing Trespasser — the first Kaiju, and as of that point still an unknown, unthinkable beast, an impossible nightmare — tearing through San Francisco, stuck reliving the loss of his family and friends. The highlights reel of the day his whole life imploded and went to hell.

Jet is stuck, so they can’t move. Zuko can’t move the Jaeger on his own, so Liberator Blue is forced to stand there, rooted to its spot, with a front row view to Catgator’s unimpeded walk towards property damage and mass casualties.

“Lotus, Jet’s chasing the RABIT! We’re stuck,” Zuko yells through the comms, unhooking himself from his rig and pulling his helmet off. “I’ll try to snap him out of it, but for now you’re on your own.”

“Seriously?” says a different, deeper voice through the comms — Lu Ten’s copilot, Zhao. “You two needed us to bail you out of this mess and now you can’t even fight? Amateurs,” he mutters, as Lotus Conqueror chases after the Kaiju, trying to intercept it before it can reach its destination.

Meanwhile, Zuko is standing in front of Jet, hands gripping his forearms, trying to get through to him. “Jet, can you hear me? It’s me, it’s Zuko. Listen to my voice,” he pleads. His voice is shaking. _He’s_ shaking, Sokka notices when he walks closer, as Zuko takes off Jet’s helmet as well.

“You’re not in San Francisco. You’re in Hong Kong, with me. It’s 2016, you’re twenty years old, not seventeen. You’re a Jaeger pilot now, like you wanted to be,” he says, holding Jet’s anguished face in his hands with urgency. Trying to ground him. “You’re in a Jaeger _right now_ , so you need to come back to the present. You _need_ to come back, come on.”

Slowly, Jet’s unfocused, distant gaze sharpens, redirects to Zuko’s. He blinks, still disoriented, but maintains eye contact.

“Z? What’s…” Jet croaks. Zuko sighs, sagging in relief. He’s back.

Just in time to watch Catgator brutally rip out one of Lotus Conqueror’s arms as it tries to keep it away from the city.

“ _Fuck_ ,” all three pilots in Liberator’s Conn-Pod say at the same time, as they watch it happen.

And then, for the first time, Zuko looks at him — at Sokka.

... _Sokka?_ he hears Zuko’s voice in the back of his brain.

 _Yes_ , he thinks at him, as hard as he can. _Yes, it’s me. You’re chasing this memory, this isn’t real_.

They hold each other’s gaze for a moment, Zuko trying to process what he’s seeing, when Catgator’s roar distracts them again. Lotus is aiming the Plasmacaster of its remaining arm at the Kaiju’s stomach, firing blast after close-range blast, but the beast is gnawing on the Jaeger’s shoulder, closing its jaws around the head, where the Pod is— 

_No_ , he can feel Zuko think, _not again. Not like this, not right now_. 

Sokka looks at him. His eyes are clear and determined, intense, before he closes them tightly and presses his palms against the sides of his head, trying to block his surroundings.

The sounds from outside of the Pod fade. Hong Kong fades. Jet fades. Then everything fades.

Sokka opens his eyes, and he’s back in Draco Orion’s Pod, securely strapped to the left side rig. He has no idea how much time has passed, how long they spent in the memory. He immediately turns his head to look at Zuko. He’s breathing hard, fogging up his visor, and his entire body is rigid, muscles so tense he shakes from the strain. 

“Wait, they’re stabilizing,” Jin’s voice says from LOCCENT — _their_ LOCCENT. “Draco, are you guys alright? We lost you there for a bit.”

Zuko silently raises an arm, still breathing, and makes a thumbs-up sign. Sokka barks a laugh, incredulous.

“Yeah, I think we’re good,” he says, breathless, never taking his eyes off his partner, because _holy shit_. Zuko just pulled himself out of the deepest RABIT hole, by sheer willpower. Sokka’s never heard of anything like it before.

Zuko finally lifts his head, and looks back at Sokka. He looks apprehensive, vulnerable — like he’s waiting for a reaction.

` _ “Both pilots lined up. Drift connection holding.” _ `

Sokka smiles at him. _Are you okay?_ he thinks at Zuko.

His expression shifts into one of mild surprise, then wariness, then relief. He tentatively smiles back. _Yeah. You?_

Sokka flashes him a thumbs-up, widening his smile into a grin. Zuko huffs a laugh.

` _“Neural bridge exercise successful,”_` the computer’s synthesized voice announces. 

“Nice job, Rangers,” Hakoda says over the comms. Sokka can hear LOCCENT celebrating in the background. “Draco Orion and her crew are approved for action.”

* * *

“Thank you. For helping me, back there,” Zuko says seriously, removing his helmet as they exit Draco Orion's Conn-Pod and walk out into the drivesuit room. Their heavy boots thump against the metal grated flooring. 

“Don’t mention it, man,” Sokka replies, tone light. He takes off his helmet as well. Zuko looks for any sign, any indication of a reaction to what Sokka had seen in his eyes. Pity, rejection, hesitation, anything. He doesn’t find it. His eyes are just blue, and open. “I just gave you a hand, is all. Teamwork.” He extends an armored fist to Zuko so he can bump it. Zuko obliges, a small smile tugging at his lips. Sokka makes everything sound so simple.

It never really is simple, though.

Zuko feels something building in the back of his head, a buzzing static, a foreshadowing of a flood. Something’s not right.

But everyone in LOCCENT is pleased, celebrating the (ultimately) successful drift trial. Even the drivesuit technicians helping them remove their suits seem in high spirits as they work — a strong drift means a strong team means real, tangible hope, after all. Hope for their side in winning the war for their futures.

So Zuko ignores it, pushes it down. It’s probably just some residual drift weirdness; it’s been a while since he’s done any of this, his brain might just be adjusting to being put through the process again.

If he feels the need to blink a little more often than usual, and if his own voice seems to come from far away instead of from his mouth, then, well. Zuko doesn’t want to think about it too closely.

He goes through decon and changes back into his uniform t-shirt and cargos almost on autopilot. He finishes before Sokka, so he walks out of the drivesuit room and into the corridor alone. Everything is great. Everything is fine.

Until it isn’t.

Until a quiet headache begins to grow behind Zuko's brow, until the industrial lighting of the corridor becomes suddenly too bright, so bright he has to squint and shield his eyes. What was quiet becomes loud. His head hurts.

Zuko leans one hand against the wall for support, closing his eyes tightly and pressing his other hand against his forehead, trying to relieve the pain. A wave of dizziness washes over him, and his ears ring, deafening. He loses track of where his limbs are for a moment, disconnecting from his own body like he’d only been possessing it, a spirit being pulled from the host.

It feels like he’s been split into a billion pieces, his molecules scattered so far from each other that they can’t find their way back into a single whole again.

His breathing is coming quick now, and he shivers. _I need to get out of here,_ he thinks, desperate and disoriented as he tries to blink his eyes open again. His vision swims. Fuck. Exhaling a shaky breath, Zuko pushes off the wall and starts walking down the corridor as fast as he can without stumbling or bumping into anything. The ringing in his ears grows louder, and there are goosebumps on the skin of his bare arms.

He’s vaguely aware of the sound of jogging steps behind him, but it’s almost entirely drowned out by the din. The sound becomes clearer as it gets closer, Zuko’s pursuer catching up to him.

“Hey, Zuko, wait!” Sokka’s voice says from behind him, clear as day and piercing violently through the fog. Zuko suddenly feels his arm being grabbed, the contact of skin to skin hypersharp and overwhelming, all of his other senses seeming dulled in contrast. Zuko’s whole body tenses, petrified — and it only lasts for a second, but the instant that Sokka touches him, Zuko’s mind is immediately flooded by a cacophony of thoughts and emotions, loud and overlapping and _Sokka’s._

( _“...didn’t wait up for me…” “...thought we could…” “...but why is he running…”)_

Zuko panics.

“Don’t touch me!” he snaps harshly, eyes wide, wrenching his arm from Sokka’s grip and turning around to face him. Which turns out to be a mistake, because it means he gets to see his face fall in real time, gets to see the hurt and confusion in his eyes in high definition. Why it is that _Sokka’s_ so clear and crisp, unblurred compared to everything else, Zuko doesn’t know.

Zuko looks at him for a tense, short moment, absolutely terrified — then turns around and runs.

* * *

By the time Zuko makes it to his quarters, everything feels awful again, but much, much worse. He’s sweating and on the verge of hyperventilating, and the ringing in his ears is louder than it’s ever been. It’s a miracle he manages to open the door, double vision and dizziness making it difficult to unlock it with shaking hands.

Zuko feels out of phase. He's two inches to the left of himself, watching from the outside. He turns on the lights in his room by force of habit, pawing at the wall, then winces at the brightness; turns them back off. He moves towards the windows, half stumbling, to shut the blinds with trembling hands. The room is not quite pitch dark now, but it’s enough.

He somehow manages to kick off his boots and strip off his uniform, woozy and almost losing his balance a couple times. His dog tags stick uncomfortably to the clammy skin of his chest. He struggles into a pair of pajama pants — struggles to find his hands, his legs — and grabs the old, faded AFI t-shirt he’d thrown over the back of his desk chair this morning. He hurriedly pulls it on before collapsing on his bed, curling inwards on his side, fists clenched and eyes squeezed shut. His whole body is shaking, and he can’t tell if he feels hot or cold.

Zuko’s not sure how much time has passed when he begins to feel his face grow wet, and his chest convulse. He realizes he’s sobbing. It’s strange, because he’s not sad, exactly — yet he can’t seem to stop. It’s a purely physical reaction, a release of _something_ his body isn’t processing correctly. He gasps again and again, an overflow of tears running down over the bridge of his nose and towards his pillow, wetting the pillowcase.

Zuko cries himself to exhaustion, losing track of time completely. He finds himself drifting into a vague, disconnected state, floating weightlessly, numbly in a gray, non-corporeal void. He has no body. Whoever, _whatever’s_ lying on his bed isn’t him.

When he finally passes out, slipping into oblivion as if carried away by a current, Zuko’s body rests.

His mind doesn’t.

* * *

_His limbs are made of flesh, made of metal, made of flesh-metal. His hands are not his hands, they’re— They’re his_ other _hands, they’re wrong, skin too pale, fingers too long. It’s all wrong._

 _His body is not his own all over again, the body he’d bled to conquer; the body that is his, is his, is_ his _, is only one body. Single entity, a single chapter, single piece of a larger whole._

> _(A body that’s a shell, a hollow marionette bestowed upon him, inherited, non-returnable. He’d carved against the grain until it fit, until it moved for him, until he could move inside it.)_

_No, his body is three bodies instead —_ three selves three spaces to occupy three angles on a plane three vessels for three minds three minds three brains _— echoing in unison._

_One: armor-machine, a juggernaut with a soul of ones and zeroes, circuitry veins, a house if a house was savior and destroyer;_

_Two: soldiers, an exposed nerve, meat and bone mangled into selfless heroes, or cannon fodder, or sacrificial lambs._

> _(A body that’s a shell; a shell that’s armor. Armor that not only moves for him but moves with him, with them, in tandem. The shell is inside him, now, and not the reverse. Inside him, beside him, outside him, around him.)_

_And when you add and you add and you add the parts, the mirrored hemispheres, holographic looking glass — but really, you’re multiplying._

_The end result is greater, so much greater than the sum, so great it can move heavy steel limbs, a body amplified, weaponized. So great it fills every cavity of your skull until it melts out your ears, so great your every twitch and sigh is felt in shockwaves, repeating into infinity — bigger than you, bigger than both of you, bigger than the three of you._

_It’s all too big, and he feels simultaneously too small to contain it and too large to be filled. It’s overwhelming, and yet he_ needs _. He needs... Something, something that’s his but he can’t find it, it was_ right here _, why can’t he find it? It feels like he’s somehow misplaced a vital organ, or an oxygen mask, or his own head._

_Whatever it is, he needs it back._

* * *

Zuko wakes up a couple hours later, disoriented and with the bitter taste of sleep on his tongue. He blinks in the darkness of the room. He feels a little better than before, thankfully, but he can also tell it’s not over yet. The odd fever dream is still fresh on his mind. The frantic need for _something,_ elusive and unnamed, the intense yearning for something he’d apparently lost, carries over from the dream, hollowing out his chest painfully — and then it dulls, almost to nothing, but still there. The background buzz of a hunger Zuko doesn’t know how to sate.

His body still feels off, disconnected, alien. He flexes his hands, looking at their vague shapes in the dark, stretching his fingers and clenching them tightly into fists. It’s like his skin is too tight on his body — or like he’s too big for it, inside it. The fragile pressure of something about to burst from constriction, spill out.

He turns around in bed to face the ceiling, exhaling shakily. He swallows, but his mouth is dry. He searches blindly for his phone on the bedside table, movements sluggish and imprecise. The bright screen makes him wince and shield his eyes, squinting to check the time. It’s around noon, but Zuko cannot imagine trying to make his way to the mess hall right now. The crowded, noisy, bright mess hall; the expectation to talk and be social, to look like he’s okay and not unraveling at the seams.

Yeah, no. No mess hall. He’ll just have to grab something from the minifridge — he’d thankfully remembered to stock it the day before.

Zuko runs a hand over his face, startling when his fingers brush the rougher texture of his scar — which is immediately confusing because, how could he forget he has it? It’s been there for almost half of his life, such a fundamental part of him and who he is by now that they can’t possibly be dissociated. But his hand, his hand had somehow been expecting smooth skin—

No, he realizes with a chill of dread. It had been expecting _someone else’s_ skin. _Someone else’s face_.

Zuko rushes out of bed and stumbles his way to the bathroom, stopping in front of the mirror. His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy from crying, and golden. They’re not blue. He shouldn’t have been expecting them to be blue. Zuko touches his face, hand trembling, trying to convince his brain that what he’s seeing is him and not someone else. _He’s_ not someone else.

He wonders if Sokka is experiencing the same thing; if he’s looking at himself, at his body and not recognizing it. Probably for the first time, unlike Zuko — though it doesn’t really feel like the dysphoria he knows. It’s less about form and more about content, more about multiplication and division than addition or subtraction. 

More about expecting some _one_ else, rather than some _thing_.

Zuko brings his hand up to his forehead and presses his eyes shut, stung by the fluorescent lights of the bathroom. Everything still feels so loud and bright; even touch seems enhanced. He can acutely feel the smooth steel of the sink under his hand; every hair strand brushing against his forehead, his scar, the nape of his neck; the cotton of his shirt feels scratchy instead of soft; the concrete floor feels abrasive, scraping against his bare feet. He has goosebumps all over. Zuko’s entire body is dangerously close to sensory overload again.

 _Please, just make it stop_ , he thinks, beginning to fear that this isn’t going to pass at all, this crossing of wires, this unmooring from himself. Maybe his brain has been permanently damaged by this last drift. Maybe this is his reality now.

The desperate yearning still calls from somewhere deep in his core, his marrow; the pit of the stone fruit of Zuko’s being. He wishes it would just _shut up_ and leave him alone. _I don’t know what you want,_ he thinks, trembling, hands gripping the sink.

But _want_ seems like the wrong word here. It isn’t even a _need_ , but more like a _loss_. Zuko feels— Incomplete. Unfinished. And not in the metaphorical way he’s used to, but literally, _literally_ unfinished — like a jigsaw puzzle with a key piece missing, or a hand-knit sweater abandoned halfway through, the wool unwinding. It’s like he’s been disassembled and then put back together haphazardly, partially, leaving pieces, entire limbs, on the cutting room floor.

It’s such a strange, haunting feeling — an absence with no recollection of the presence preceding it. If only Zuko knew what’s missing, what he needs to find to feel normal again. To feel like a whole person again.

Zuko spends the entire rest of the day in his quarters, not trusting himself to venture outside without collapsing or dissociating wildly again. The fact that no one comes to check on him only vaguely registers, so consumed that he is with surviving this deluge of mind-fucking, identity-bending agony, but it also doesn’t really surprise him. It’s not like he’s particularly essential, outside of an actual Kaiju attack. And thank fuck there isn’t one happening right now.

He even tries to meditate, to ground himself; to pull himself back into his body. It helps a little — not a lot. It’s frustrating, and Zuko soon loses patience with it. Reading as a distraction unfortunately turns out to be out of the question too, he finds. Turning on the lights still hurts his eyes, and it’s difficult to focus on the words, the dizziness and double vision coming and going in waves.

He settles for music, lying down in his bed in the dark again, black and red headphones over his ears and set to a much lower volume than he usually prefers. His hearing is still too sensitive, too raw. Still, he needs to pass the time somehow, until this is over. _If_ it’s ever over. Fuck.

The music is comforting, if only for its familiarity — Zuko plays his favorite albums on repeat in an attempt to anchor himself to, well, _himself_. To find a fragment of identity somewhere. 

By the time Zuko thinks to check the time again, after going through the entirety of his music library so many times he’s lost count, it’s already turned to nighttime. He feels exhausted, limbs heavy like he’s just run a marathon. His body is running on back-up power, having spent so much energy on trying to keep itself together. Trying to keep _him_ together.

He’s exhausted, and yet he can’t sleep. He puts his headphones away and lazily pulls the covers up, but it’s no use. He tosses and turns under them, mind still awake and running in the background. That _something_ is still missing, a gaping void in his chest, in his head, and it’s clear he won’t be able to fall asleep without it.

There’s an uneasy suspicion slithering quietly in the back of his mind, more of an instinct than a thought. It starts off distant, far-fetched, but the more he thinks about it the louder it gets, the more sense it makes in his clouded mind. He’s too tired to fight it.

He needs to go to Sokka.

* * *

Zuko’s never been to Sokka’s quarters, and the corridors of the Icebox are still unfamiliar to him, but somehow, he _knows_. He knows exactly where to go, where he needs to be, right now — follows the acute awareness he suddenly has of Sokka like the blinking dot on a submarine sonar, like Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth.

Sokka opens the door before Zuko even gets the chance to knock. The room behind him is dark, illuminated only by the soft warm glow of a bedside lamp.

The relief Zuko feels without the metal barrier between them is immediate, and he can finally see straight again. He can _breathe_.

“Hey man,” Sokka greets him, voice tired. “Can’t sleep either, huh?”

Zuko doesn’t bother trying to speak; he only shakes his head. He shivers pathetically as he stands at Sokka's doorway, and takes him in. Sokka — clearly dressed for bed, in a T-shirt that says ‘While you were being heterosexual, I studied the blade’ and cactus print boxers, hair loose around his face, handsome as always — looks hungover, exhausted. _Like he was run over by a truck_ , Zuko thinks, automatically knowing that’s how Sokka himself would describe it. Zuko trembles, dizzy again, and leans with one hand against the doorway for support, bringing the other hand to his forehead.

Sokka’s brow furrows in concern. “Whoa, dude, are you okay? You’re shaking,” he says, raising a hand as if to touch him, but then hesitates. “Come inside, man, c’mon.” 

He opens the door wider for Zuko to pass, and as Zuko walks by him he places a tentative hand on his shoulder to guide him inside. They both jolt at the touch, at the echo of the neural connection that floods their minds in that single instant ( _“...was never like this with Katara...”_ “...think I’m going insane...” _“...looks like he’s been crying...”_ “...need to be near him, why...”). They both flinch away, and stare at each other, equal parts confused and horrified.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Zuko says, voice small and unsteady.

“I... I think we’re ghost drifting,” Sokka says absently, still looking at Zuko like he’s stuck between fight or flight.

They both stand there, suspended, for a long moment. Zuko’s heartbeat rages in his ears, and there’s something deep in his brain screaming at him to touch Sokka again, that _he’s_ where Zuko can find relief. He already feels less like he’s lost something essential he never even knew he had, less like he’s missing several limbs, less like he’s outside of himself — just by being in the same room as Sokka.

“ _Why_ ,” he croaks, because he’s terrified. This had never happened with Jet. Zuko wonders if he did something wrong this time, if this is somehow his fault.

Sokka sighs, body sagging from its tense position. He moves to close the door. “No one knows why it happens, it’s so rare,” he says, turning and leaning his back against the closed door, crossing his arms. (He’s trying to keep his distance, Zuko notices. His brain screams some more.) “Just luck of the draw, I guess,” Sokka says. 

“I don’t know if I’d call it luck,” Zuko grumbles, looking around the room in the half light, searching for a distraction. Sokka's walls are covered in blueprints, family polaroids, Sokka’s own drawings. He's not bad.

“I think we’ll be fine. Based on what I heard, it goes away after a while.”

“Great.” _And how much is a while?_ Zuko thinks, _Because right now I feel like I need to crawl inside you or I'll die_. And then, _hopefully you couldn’t hear that_. He focuses on reading the spines of the books on Sokka’s shelf so as not to panic. 

“Y’know...” Sokka starts, chewing his lip. “I actually... I actually thought about going to find you, too. I didn’t think you’d wanna see me, though, so I didn’t.”

Zuko frowns, and looks down. He had yelled at Sokka, hadn’t he. “I’m sorry. I was a dick to you, earlier. You didn’t deserve that. I just... I got— scared. This,” Zuko turns and gestures vaguely between them. “is really fucking scary. And when you grabbed my arm, I—”

“Just reacted, yeah, I know. I'm scared too, honestly,” Sokka admits, almost confesses. He pushes off the door, but hesitates to move otherwise. Uncrosses his arms, crosses them again. “Not to, uh, make this even weirder than it already is, but I feel like— I feel like if I don’t get physically closer to you right this second I’m going to spontaneously combust,” he says, sounding apologetic about it, like he’s afraid of Zuko’s reaction. “Like if I leave my room right now I’ll be leaving half of me behind, or something. It’s freaky as hell.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Zuko breathes, eyes wide, because, _fuck._ It’s not just him. They’re both in this messed up telepathic boat together. It’s kind of comforting, actually. Zuko feels less alone. (Which is the point of the drift, he guesses. He's not alone.)

“Don’t worry, though, I’m not— I won’t touch you anymore, if you don’t want to. It’s— The touch telepathy thing, that’s super weird anyway, so,” Sokka says, shrugging, going for casual and missing by a mile. He finally moves from his spot near the door, stepping closer to Zuko but still keeping his distance. He leans one arm against the bunk beds. “You can stay here tonight, if you want. You can take Katara’s bunk. I don’t think either of us is going to get any sleep if we’re in separate rooms.”

“I... Thank you,” Zuko replies, brows drawn, sincere. Sokka is too kind to him. “Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.”

“Nah, man. You’re not imposing. It’s just an empty bed. Hopefully by tomorrow we won’t be, you know, anymore. And you can go back to yours,” Sokka says, then pauses, hesitates. “Plus, I, uh. I actually like sharing a room with someone. I kinda miss it,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “We can pretend it’s a sleepover and not just us trying to cope with an unexplained neuro-metaphysical phenomenon,” he finishes, flashing Zuko a tentative smile.

Zuko huffs at that, the corners of his lips twitching upwards. “Yeah, okay,” he says. There is an awkward beat where they just look at each other, until Zuko gestures to the top bunk. “So I just...?”

Sokka’s pulled out of his reverie. “Yeah, yeah, make yourself at home, dude. _Mi_ bunk _es su_ bunk, or something,” Sokka says, lying down in his own unmade bed.

Zuko climbs the ladder to the top bunk, but is surprised to find it already occupied. By a small, slightly worn moose plushie.

“Is that...?”

“Foo Foo Cuddly Poops? Yeah. He keeps watch from the top bunk,” Sokka explains from below. “You, uh, you can put him somewhere else, if you want. He won’t mind.”

 _He won’t mind_ , Zuko thinks, thoroughly endeared. He feels slightly insane for finding Sokka as adorable as the plushie. _Stop_ , he thinks, _do not go there_. Right now, of all times, is the worst time to think gay thoughts about his copilot. (Not that there ever would be a good time for that.)

“No, it’s okay. He can stay,” Zuko says, staring at the moose’s furry little face as he climbs into the bunk fully.

(If Zuko picks up the plushie after lying down and holds it close to his chest then, well. Sokka can’t see him from the bottom bunk, can he? It’ll be fine.)

* * *

After Zuko climbs up to the top bunk, Sokka waits for the familiar sounds of a body settling, getting comfortable; the shift in weight over the mattress, the creak of the metal frame. It’s such a specific thing to miss, Sokka knows, and yet he does. There’s something reassuring about it, grounding. Something that calms the restless ache in his chest. The bed is occupied; he’s not alone.

It feels oddly right to have Zuko here with him, above him. The hurricane that had been raging in Sokka’s brain all day has quickly tempered down to a gale, then to a breeze — just by virtue of being in his copilot’s presence. He imagines it must be the same for Zuko, the same relief of recovering what had been lost, of a missing piece clicking into place. Of adding up the fractions of a broken whole.

At first, Sokka had assumed that what he was experiencing was just a massive drift hangover, like some fucked up, drift version of the bends. It had started not long after Zuko lashed out at him in the corridor, first manifesting as a splitting headache; a battle-axe cleaving his skull in half. The dizziness and shaking, the ringing in his ears came after, forcing Sokka to lean his back against the wall for a moment.

Then, came the flood.

Sokka’s mind has never been particularly orderly, but it had never raced this insanely fast either. His thoughts were running at turbo speed, jumping from thread to thread like in a free association game. It was so overwhelming, so maddening, that he’d rushed back to his quarters in a panic, bumping into at least three random officers on his way.

His body felt slower than it should, slower than him — like it wasn’t really his, just a borrowed vessel, second-hand and ill-fitting. It couldn’t keep up. He needed to _gogogogofaster_ , his thoughts a mile ahead and his body a mile behind. 

Getting to his room hadn’t fixed anything, but at least he could pace and fidget in peace. The disconnect with his body only intensified, leading to more fidgeting to counter it, a physical sensation to focus on. But, really, the worst of it was the persistent feeling of _lack,_ of _absence,_ of _amputation._ Sokka had left something behind somewhere, something indispensable, and now everything in him was screaming to get it back.

His sense of time felt completely skewed. At some point he’d sat down on his desk, sweating cold, leg bouncing nonstop, and repeatedly disassembled and reassembled the small maze solving robot he’d built just for fun the week before. Sokka wasn’t sure _why_ he was doing it, just that not doing it made him more anxious. The repetitive task was soothing, a welcome distraction from the storm of thoughts in his brain. (Now if only his hands and arms could stop feeling like they belonged to someone else, like they’d been grafted onto him a la Frankenstein, that’d be fucking great.)

He obsessively combed through his drift with Zuko over and over in his head, analyzing it and breaking it apart, searching for everything worthy of rejection on his end. Every insecurity, every inadequacy, everything his partner could have seen and taken issue with, or been disappointed by. Sokka felt ridiculous and too sensitive for it, but the way Zuko had snapped at him and pulled away had actually kind of stung.

It hadn’t occurred to him at the time that Zuko might have been experiencing the same thing he was — or similar, at least.

When Suki had knocked on his door a little after one, worried because Sokka hadn’t shown up for lunch — and he never misses lunch — he’d just said, _“Suki, you’re a literal goddess,”_ and accepted the tray of food she’d brought him, hoping he didn’t look as out of it as he felt. _“I know,”_ she’d said, looking at him with concern, and then had asked him if he’d seen Zuko, if Zuko was with him. The question had set off alarm bells in Sokka’s head. Had Zuko not gone to the mess hall either? Had anyone seen him since they’d drifted?

 _“Toph and I actually thought you guys might have skipped it together or something,”_ Suki had said, and Sokka had just shaken his head. If Zuko wasn’t feeling well either, then maybe he should— Wait, no. He shouldn’t, actually. _“I think he might be mad at me for some reason,”_ he’d told Suki with a strained smile. She’d asked why, frowning, and Sokka had just shrugged, bouncing his leg again. He’d wanted to fidget with his hands, but they had been occupied holding the tray. _“You don’t look okay, Sokka, maybe you should go to Medical,”_ she’d said, and he’d made a vague promise to go if it got too bad — but all he could think of was Zuko.

Maybe his copilot was also feeling these awful side effects from their drift; maybe they were both going through the same thing. The urge to run to Zuko’s door was so strong that Sokka almost caved. He wasn’t even sure _what_ exactly he wanted to do once he got there; it’s not like he knew how to make it go away, other than by waiting it out. It just seemed like— like it would be _easier_ , if they were together.

It only really hit him that it’s not a regular drift hangover that they’re having when Zuko had shown up at his door. Sokka _knew_ he was there, could feel him through the concrete and the steel, before he even reached his end of the corridor. That impossible awareness — that _connection_ — was not explained by Sokka’s hangover theory. The only thing that could explain it was—

Ghost drifting. They’re _ghost drifting_.

Right now, as Zuko settles silently in the bunk above Sokka, there’s a lingering, invisible thread connecting them, linking their minds to each other. They hadn’t properly, fully detached from each other after drifting. Hence the overwhelming feeling that there was something profoundly important missing — there _was_ , technically. It was just that it was some _one,_ rather than some _thing._

Someone that, for a significant moment, had been an integral part of him, nigh indistinguishable from the rest. They’d been fused together into a single cohesive being, and then split apart again, like it was nothing. Their brains and bodies are now rebelling, rejecting the notion that they are separate people.

Great.

Sokka lies there in his bed, staring up at the underside of the top bunk, hands crossed over his stomach, twiddling his thumbs. He hasn’t moved to turn the bedside lamp off yet, even though he’s exhausted, and poor Zuko probably just wants to go to sleep. But Sokka — _Sokka_ kinda wants to talk, actually, now that his partner’s here.

There’s this pressing need to debrief, to bring up what they’d seen in the drift. To talk about it out loud. The fact that they can’t see each other’s faces right now would make it easier, too, in a way.

Sokka is still thinking about the moment they’d converged, about the intense exchange of histories, memories and emotions. After the handshake, the voluntary handing of the maps to each other’s scars, open wounds and poorly healed fractures. And Sokka is thinking about his. One, in particular, stands out to him right now — a blinking light on the dashboard indicating an issue to be addressed.

“So,” he says, breaking the soft, drowsy silence. “Now you know.”

Zuko’s voice floats down from the top bunk, sounding a little hoarse from exhaustion. “What?”

“Now you know. That I'm basically a huge fraud.”

Sokka hears it, feels it when Zuko shifts in the bed above him. “What are you even talking about, Sokka?”

“I’m talking about…” Sokka begins, then frowns. “Look, you saw, when we drifted. You must have, because I did. So you _must_ know. That I— And don’t ask me _how_ I did this exactly but— I’ve somehow conned my way into _both_ piloting _and_ J-Tech. And they let me. And now I’m here.”

If Zuko had been impressed with him before, when learning that Draco had been Sokka’s brainchild, now he sure as hell isn’t anymore. Now he knows just how unremarkable Sokka is, just how inadequate. How much he lacks in comparison.

“ _What?_ What do you mean, ‘conned your way in’?” Zuko asks, sounding very confused.

Sokka sighs, rubbing one eye with his fist. “It’s obvious, though, isn’t it? I didn’t— I didn't go to school for Engineering like I wanted to. I have no higher education, right? And I wasn’t even _on_ the J-Tech track in the Academy. And yet I _magically_ landed a job as a Jaeger engineer? Right, okay.”

Zuko pauses for a beat before replying. “Sokka, you literally _designed_ our Jaeger.”

 _That doesn’t count_ , Sokka thinks as he runs a hand nervously through his loose hair, tangling his fingers in the dark strands. “Yeah, _maybe_ , but that doesn’t— I didn’t _earn_ it, my place in J-Tech. I shouldn’t even have been _hired_ in the first place. It’s like I was, I dunno... An intruder, or something. Like I skipped several steps on the way,” he explains, the words pouring out of him like a dam had broken.

“And when it comes to piloting, well...” Sokka laughs awkwardly, self-conscious. “Probably not the _best_ thing to say to your partner who you already drifted with, but, um... I'm not the best pilot, either. Katara... Katara was _amazing_ , and it’s a good thing you’re an incredible pilot too, ‘cause it will balance us out, but I’m... I’m just _okay_. I never got top scores at the Academy or anything, and I honestly sometimes wonder why they even let me graduate. I was pretty surprised when I got selected for your trials.”

“But you _were_ ,” Zuko replies, tone firm and confident. “And that’s not for no reason. If the Academy approved you back then it’s because you fit the PPDC’s standards, Sokka. They wouldn’t have let you pilot otherwise. And they wouldn’t have called you back now either.”

Sokka covers his face with his hands in frustration. “Ugh, I _know,_ but it’s— I feel like I stole it. Like I’m not good enough, and yet I got it anyway. Does that make sense?” he asks the underside of the top bunk, uncovering his face again. “And I keep thinking someday someone will realize, you know, that I’m not supposed to be here at all, that I’ve somehow fooled everyone.”

“Um. Okay,” Zuko says, hesitant. “No offense, but it just sounds to me like you have Impostor Syndrome.”

Sokka frowns. “Is that your official diagnosis, Dr. Freud?” he retorts automatically, bitter and sarcastic, but then regrets it. “Sorry, that’s— That was uncalled for. Maybe you’re right. It’s just— So frustrating to feel like you haven't really earned anything you have, you know? I feel like a fake.”

There’s a short moment in which neither of them says anything, Sokka’s admission lingering, still present in the air around them.

“I think I know what you mean, actually,” Zuko says quietly, then. “It’s like, you have this thing you wanted, but it feels like a crime because it shouldn’t be yours. And you’re afraid it might get taken away at any moment, even though you know you don’t deserve it.”

Sokka already knows by now that Zuko is talking about a lot more than just something like piloting.

“...Yeah.”

“We have way more in common than I thought,” Zuko admits softly into the dimly lit room.

Sokka huffs. “I know, right? Props to the algorithm, I guess. I mean, we both have scary, competent little sisters, we both lost our moms...”

“We both have... Fathers.”

Yikes. Sokka really didn’t think that sentence through. “...Right, yeah,” he says, cringing. “You mom seemed nice, though. From what I could see.”

“She was,” Zuko says softly, fondly.

“You two were pretty close, huh. I could tell you miss her a lot,” Sokka observes, remembering the layers of emotion surrounding Zuko’s memory of his mother. “She looked like you, you know. Or, I guess, _you_ look like _her_. You take after her.” _And not your father. You’re not like your father._

(Wait, shit, hopefully Zuko doesn’t think Sokka means that he looks feminine? Because that’s not what he means at all, he doesn’t think—)

“You look like your mother, too.”

Oh. Sokka’s not sure what to say to that. He’s always associated his mother more strongly with Katara. Maybe he should check later if Zuko’s right, pick one of the polaroids off his wall and take it to the mirror.

There’s a lull in the conversation, but Sokka’s still thinking about Zuko’s father — about what he’d seen of him in the drift, what had made them misalign in the first place. He feels that they _should_ talk about it, but hesitates. Would Zuko be upset if he brought it up?

“Hey, Zuko...”

“Yeah?”

Sokka doesn't want to bring up painful memories unnecessarily. Not when the drift already had.

“...Nevermind.”

“Say what you want to say,” Zuko says, as if knowing exactly what topic Sokka’s thoughts are circling. Hell, he probably does. “I can feel you thinking down there. You’re very loud.”

“Sorry. I know. I just...” Sokka trails off, trying to figure out how to word what he wants to say. “Your dad, what he did to you... That wasn’t right. It was messed up. No one deserves that, and you especially didn’t.”

There’s a pause before Zuko answers. His voice is quiet when he does. “...Thank you.”

“I guess I kind of, uh, deduced? That something along those lines had happened, since, I mean, you mentioned living with your uncle, and then the thing with Jet, and also the way you talked about your father...” Sokka explains, inevitably rambling. “At first I thought you’d maybe been kicked out for being gay, but then you came out as trans to me and it... It made sense. So I updated my theory. But I just— I never imagined—” Sokka falters, speechless in his outrage. He stares at the underside of the top bunk, sympathetic indignation burning in his chest. “I'm just— I'm so _angry_ for you. What an asshole.” If Sokka focuses he can still smell the burning flesh, feel the heat and the pain on his face. It’s unspeakable. _His own father_. “No, fuck that, that’s too much of an euphemism. He’s a fucking _monster_. I’m really, truly sorry for the way he treated you.”

Sokka desperately wants to hug Zuko, but he doesn’t think that would go over very well right now. He feels powerless. It’s not like he can travel back in time and stop all of it from happening, retroactively save his copilot from that suffering. Knowing that doesn’t stop him from wanting to.

“It’s okay,” Zuko tells him, even though it’s very much not. “It’s not your fault.”

 _I hope a Kaiju fucking eats that guy_ , Sokka thinks fervently to himself, frowning. Zuko laughs quietly above him, startled, and Sokka blinks. Oh?

“Wait, you heard that?” he asks, poking his head off the side of the bed so he can look up at the top bunk. “What I was thinking just now?”

“Uh… Yeah,” Zuko says, as if caught doing something wrong.

“Whoa,” Sokka says, lying back down, amazed and a bit self-conscious. “Good thing you thought it was funny and not, you know, rude and morbid. I did just wish death on your dad.”

“It was funny. Don’t worry, I’ve, uh… I’ve done that a lot before,” Zuko confesses, and Sokka feels his heart twist.

“For what it’s worth—” Sokka begins, then cuts himself off, closes his mouth. Maybe he shouldn’t.

“...Yeah?”

“This... _Might_ be insensitive but, uh,” he tries again, hoping he won’t be crossing a line, or making Zuko uncomfortable. That’s the last thing he wants. “I think you should be proud of your scar. My Gran Gran always said that a scar means you survived something. And you’ve definitely survived a lot. Also, it makes you really unique.”

Zuko is silent above him, but Sokka can feel a turbulent tangle of emotions rolling off him like a wave, impossible to distinguish individually. Shit. 

He laughs awkwardly, regretting ever opening his mouth. “Sorry, that’s... I shouldn’t have said that—”

“No, it’s— It’s fine,” Zuko interrupts him, voice thick with emotion. “I... Thank you. People don’t usually... See it like that.”

“People suck,” Sokka says simply, relieved. He somehow hadn’t said the wrong thing, point for Sokka. He hates that clearly Zuko hasn’t been told anything like that before. Never been told what a sign of strength, of resilience what he carries with him everyday.

“Yeah, they do.”

“Why are we saving them again?” Sokka jokes, an attempt to lift the mood.

Zuko snorts. “Because we don’t want everyone to become Kaiju food.”

“Right, that’s it.”

There’s a moment of silence again, but Sokka still has more to say. (When does he not?)

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” he tells Zuko earnestly. “Catgator. I saw what happened. You did the best you could.”

“Yeah… About that,” Zuko starts, sounding regretful as he shifts in bed again. “I’m sorry I pulled you in with me like that. I knew I'd be a... Difficult partner. I’m sorry.”

Sokka frowns. “Dude, stop, okay? You’re not any more difficult than anyone else with similar baggage. If anything, you’re not difficult enough, if you ask me,” he reassures him. “The way you pulled yourself out of it was insane. Super impressive. It totally trumps having chased that fluffy memory tail at all.” 

“Oh.” Zuko sounds genuinely surprised. “Thank you?”

“Yeah. And I mean it. It wasn’t your fault. Now that I _was_ there, I can tell you for sure.”

Now that Sokka knows what happened, everything makes sense. It hadn’t been Zuko’s fault at all. It hadn’t even been completely Jet’s fault, really. Had it been irresponsible to pilot anyway when he’d been so vulnerable and teetering on the edge of triggered all day? Yes, definitely. But he’d clearly thought he could handle himself, and Zuko had trusted him to. No one could have predicted Jet would take such a sharp plummet into the RABIT hole like that, and he certainly couldn’t have stopped it when it had already caught him in its painful vortex.

It all really came down to an unfortunate accident, a disaster that couldn’t be easily pinned on anyone. If Sokka had to pick someone, he would blame Jet, but even that doesn’t feel right, or fair. Not after knowing what he’d gone through.

At the same time, Sokka agrees that dismissing him had been the right choice, after all. Having someone with that massive amount of trauma in a Pod — Kaiju-related trauma, no less — no matter how good of a pilot they are, would always be dangerous. It’s a harsh truth, one that hangs over every Ranger that has a personal history with the creatures, anyone that has been directly affected by their destructive, deadly rampages. One that Sokka himself had to accept and remind himself of. The difference is, he’d lost two people, he hadn’t seen it happen, and he’d already known Kaiju existed at the time. While Jet... Jet had it the worst of any survivor-pilot Sokka’s ever known, probably. Letting him fight at all had been a very risky decision by the PPDC.

The truth is that no one ever really thought the war would last this long. As part of the very first wave of pilots, both Zuko and Jet had been thrown into the fray without much thought to long term consequences. The radiation poisoning so common with the first Jaegers had been one of the results of that. Sokka is pissed just thinking about how shitty the shielding had been on the Mark-1 to -3’s; they were putting _people_ in there, for fuck’s sake. He wonders if Zuko still carries his preventative Metharocin pills with him, just out of habit. He knows his dad does.

Zuko doesn’t respond for a moment. Eventually he speaks, soft and hesitant — vulnerable. “So you don’t think I should’ve—”

“Nope. Not your fault,” Sokka says firmly, leaving no room for argument. “Also, you pulled your copilot out of the hole too — do you have some kind of superpower, or something?”

_“What?”_

“Like, mind powers. Maybe you’re psychic and never even knew it,” Sokka ponders distractedly. “Not that psychics exist, because, uh, they don’t. It’s not a thing. Just like astrology, and Bigfoot,” he says, sighing in disappointment. “Unfortunately.”

“I—” Zuko is apparently left speechless, trying to process Sokka’s nonsense. “Okay.”

Sokka winces. “Sorry, that was— Another tangent, uh.” _Maybe it’s time to stop talking._ “My brain is more fried than usual. Anyway, you’re probably tired. We can just go to sleep now, if you want.”

“Yeah, okay,” Zuko says. “Sounds good.”

“‘Kay,” Sokka says, turning off the bedside lamp. “Night, Zuko.”

“Night.”

* * *

Sokka isn’t sure how much time passes, but he’s turned around in bed at least seven times. Seventeen. Maybe. Point is, he still can’t sleep.

He’s not sure what else is missing. Zuko is here already, and he definitely feels much better in his presence. He thought he’d be able to sleep with him in the room, but no dice. There’s still something itching in his brain, something hungering. Something that needs _more_ than what he’s given it. It just doesn’t want to tell him what that _more_ is (and, honestly, Sokka is afraid to ask).

“Hey, Sokka...” Zuko’s voice comes quietly from the top bunk, barely above a whisper in the dark.

Oh, cool. He’s not asleep either. Hopefully it’s not Sokka keeping him up. “Yep?”

“...Can I come down?” Zuko asks, words tumbling out in a rush, as if he’s afraid of them. “Wait, nevermind. Forget I said that.”

Suddenly, Sokka knows what _more_ is. (And Zuko probably needs it just as bad, he realizes.)

“No, you, uh... You can totally come down here,” he says, going for cool and casual. His heartbeat is so much faster than it has any business being right now. “It’s just really small, though, so we’ll kinda have to squeeze.”

“Wait, really?” Zuko asks, sounding skeptical.

“Yeah. C’mon, dude. I’ll just scoot over,” Sokka says as he turns the bedside lamp back on and moves to one side of the bed, back facing the wall, so Zuko can slide in. This is a good idea. “We’ve been in each other’s heads, what’s sharing a bed, right?”

“Right,” Zuko’s voice follows him as he climbs down the ladder. “It’s... Not a big deal.”

“It’s not! Totally not.” Yep. A good idea.

Zuko joins him in the bottom bunk. He’s trying to occupy as little space as possible, lying down on his side and facing Sokka, and oh, wow. He’s really close, isn’t he. Sokka can feel Zuko’s breath on his face, can see each individual eyelash.

And, what do you know, something in Sokka’s head seems to align now that they’re inches apart. He feels his body relax, when he hadn’t even noticed it was tense before. It feels _right_ , like everything is finally in its place. Like his mind is a room in disarray and Zuko came and organized it just so.

_Fuck._

“Better, huh? You too?” he asks, voice a little high, hoping he’s not the only one experiencing this bizarre epiphany. He feels vulnerable, exposed in a way the drift itself hadn’t made him feel. Everything feels fragile, raw.

“Yeah,” Zuko says, so quiet Sokka almost doesn’t hear him. He’s looking at Sokka like he’s searching for something. If Sokka knew what it was, he’d give it to him.

“This is wild, you hear about ghost drifting but you never really expect... Uh.” Sokka stops speaking, and begins to rub his left eye with his fist. It itches terribly, a thousand ants in a snowstorm, a thousand pins and needles.

“What?” Zuko asks, worried.

“Nothing, just... My eye. It’s itching like crazy.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Zuko frowns, and tries to inch away from Sokka. He’s (probably correctly) concluded that it’s his proximity affecting Sokka, in some kind of physical empathy. Sokka’s eye is Zuko’s eye.

Sokka does _not_ want Zuko to move away. He instinctively grabs his partner’s arm to stop him. “No, it’s okay, it’s—”

Everything suddenly shifts like vertigo, and Sokka is looking at himself through Zuko’s eyes, holding his own arm, but it’s Zuko’s arm at the same time, and it’s Zuko holding it, looking at him and at himself, and he’s both _him and me and I and you and we_ all at once—

Until it switches again, and they’re themselves, separately.

Sokka tries to blink away the dizziness, remember who he is. “Fuck. That was really trippy.”

“You’re still touching me,” Zuko points out.

“Crap, sorry,” Sokka says quickly, letting Zuko’s arm go like it’d stung him. He really needs to stop touching him without permission like that.

“No, I meant— You were touching me, and it stopped. Look,” Zuko explains, reaching out to lightly touch Sokka’s arm. 

Nothing happens. Nothing other than that odd relief, the simultaneous sharpening of everything around them and softening of the discomfort, the lack.

“You’re right,” Sokka says, looking down at his arm, confused. He looks back up at Zuko. “But you’re still getting the—”

“The relief? Yeah,” he replies, and pulls hand away, tucking it close to his body.

“Maybe it’s, uh. Maybe it’s fading,” Sokka says softly, trying not to sound disappointed.

Sokka is _not_ disappointed. He’s not. He’s not thinking that this might mean Zuko will leave and that he’d rather he didn’t. It’s a _good_ thing if they stop ghost drifting. Obviously.

“Maybe,” Zuko says, then bites his lip. “I don't think I, um... I don’t think it’s safe for me to go yet. Sorry.”

Sokka doesn’t really want to examine the absurd relief he feels. “No, I agree, you should stay. I, uh... I might— Want you to stay. Just— Just because I don’t wanna feel gross again, you know? That would suck if you left and we both started feeling weird, when you could have just stayed and, yeah,” he rambles.

“Yeah,” Zuko echoes.

They lie there for a moment, looking at each other silently. It’s strange, trying to reconcile the Zuko lying in front of him with the one in Zuko's own memories. 

The quiet, awkward but sweet, if a bit gloomy guy he’d only recently met is a far cry from the glimpses of the depressed and unstable ball of rage Sokka had witnessed in the drift. 

It’s not like he’s an entirely different person; Zuko is still hot-headed, sarcastic, anxious, contrite. There is continuity there. But past Zuko seemed a lot more wild, explosive — the kind of person who lashes out at the slightest touch. A maze riddled with trip wires.

It’s like looking at a once sharp rock whose edges had been steadily sanded down by water erosion. 

Honestly? Sokka is kind of glad that this is the version of Zuko he gets. He doesn’t know if they would have gotten along if they had met back then.

Admittedly, Sokka himself is a different person from who he was when he and Katara had piloted together. He’d been ambitious and bright-eyed, starstruck, eager to join the fight and follow in his dad’s footsteps. He'd been a bit sanctimonious about it, too, judgmental of those unwilling to sacrifice everything for the war effort.

Zuko probably wouldn’t have liked him either. And he does want Zuko to like him.

In the low light Sokka can make out the contours of Zuko’s face, the relief and topography of his scar. His curiosity gets the better of him.

“Can I...?” Sokka asks, almost a whisper, as he tentatively lifts a hand to Zuko’s scar. “You can say no,” he adds, just to be sure.

Zuko hesitates, eyes wide in alarm, but then nods shakily. He closes his eyes and holds his breath, waiting for contact. Zuko is trusting him. Sokka pretends his chest doesn’t feel impossibly full with the weight of it.

His touch is as light as he can make it as he traces the lines of scar tissue with his fingertips, the shape of Zuko’s eye underneath with his thumb.

“Does it hurt?”

Zuko opens his eyes, dark amber in the half-light, and Sokka has to remember to breathe. “No. Not anymore.”

Sokka notes the way his left eye is permanently slightly closed; the missing eyebrow above it; the way the patch of scarred skin stretches beyond his cheek and into his hairline, maybe even his ear.

He’s running his thumb across the line on his cheek where pale skin meets reddened scar when he starts to feel self-conscious. Zuko’s eyes are open, glancing from his hand to his face, and Sokka feels heat creeping up his face. _Shit. I've been doing this for too long now, haven’t I? I’m being weird. Zuko’s gonna think I have some kind of scar fetish or something. Quick, do something stupid._

Sokka boops Zuko’s nose. “Boop.”

He blinks, understandably startled. “What?”

Sokka shrugs, looking away, embarrassed. His hands are now safely on his side of the bed. “I dunno, just trying to break the tension.”

Zuko just looks at him like he’s an alien, which, fair.

“You’ve also got these,” Sokka observes, quickly and lightly poking the tiny scars under Zuko’s lip — making sure to not be weird about it, nothing too tender or lingering. He’s already done too much of that.

(Why had Sokka been looking at his lips? No reason, don’t answer that.)

Zuko rubs the skin where Sokka poked. “Ah, yeah. They’re piercing scars. I used to have snakebites.”

“Man, why’d you take them out? We could’ve matched.”

Zuko frowns. “I, uh, I didn’t actually know you yet.”

“Oh, right,” Sokka says distractedly. “Kinda feels like I've always known you, now. Weird.”

“I like your septum, though,” Zuko admits, almost shy, pointing briefly to Sokka’s nose. “It’s, um, it’s— Cool,” he finishes lamely.

Sokka responds automatically. “Thanks. It’s part of the mandatory bisexual uniform.”

_How many times is that now? Three? Four?_

“Oh. Cool.”

(Does Zuko think he’s hinting at something? _Should_ he be?)

(He’s so close. Sokka could easily kiss him. Just lean in and—)

O- _kay_ , enough of that. There’s still a chance that Zuko might be able to hear his thoughts, and Sokka doesn’t want to throw a wrench into their partnership, not when it’s so new and still finding its footing. Zuko might look painfully kissable right now, but the job comes first.

(Besides, who knows how Zuko would even react to Sokka’s wandering thoughts, anyway.)

Sokka idly wonders if they should tell someone about this, about their ghost drifting; wonders if they should get their brains scanned, just to be safe. Then he sees Zuko trying to disguise a yawn behind a fist (god, that’s cute, why is that so damn _cute_ ) and thinks, maybe tomorrow, if it’s still happening.

“Hey, man,” Sokka starts, gently. “We should try and get some sleep. You look about ready to pass out.”

Zuko frowns again. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to stay here with you? Down here, I mean,” he asks. “I can try the top bunk again. I don’t want to get in the way of your sleep.”

“You’re not in the way, dude. You’re _helping_ ,” Sokka tells him. He can’t let Zuko keep thinking he’s a problem for him, a burden. “Seriously, feel free to stay down here with me. It might be narrow but there’s room enough for the both of us.”

“Okay. I’ll… I’ll stay then.”

“Great.” Sokka smiles, tired. He really does need to go to sleep. “Can you, uh, can you get the light? I can’t reach from back here.”

Zuko reaches behind him and turns the lamp off, covering them in darkness once more. Sokka pulls the covers up, getting comfortable.

“Goodnight, Sokka,” Zuko says quietly.

“Night, man.” Sokka’s eyes are already closed.

It doesn't take long for him to feel himself being pulled under, deeper and deeper into that dark, soothing nothingness of sleep. He thinks he hears Zuko say something to him, but he can’t really focus on anything anymore.

Sokka surrenders, and lets sleep take him.

* * *

_He’s holding his little sister in his arms, small and precious, and it’s his job to take care of her— but then she’s older, and better than him in every way, the perfect daughter, the daughter he couldn’t be—_

_He sees his mother then, and her kind blue eyes, glacier blue— and then her soft voice calling him_ duckling _even though she’d never called him that, and her hair is so much darker than he remembers, and then—_

_And then she’s gone. She’s gone, and he never got to say goodbye. He’s smaller than he remembers, so young, needed her so much still—_

_He still had his father. His father, his hands strong and gentle, the hands of a protector— now encased in flame, burning gold as his eyes, wrathful and devoid of any affection, reaching towards him, reaching towards his face—_

* * *

Sokka wakes up with the left side of his face tingling. He blinks blearily in the half dark room, the composite, amalgamate dream still fading from his mind. He’s vaguely aware that his alarm hasn’t rung yet, so it’s probably very early still. His brain decides he should check the time on his phone, and tries to send the command to the muscles of his arm — but then realizes that his arm is otherwise occupied. Both are, in fact.

The sudden awareness of his body’s position brings Sokka to full alertness, finally. He’s… They’re… Zuko...

_Zuko had wrapped himself around Sokka like a koala in his sleep._

His head is tucked under Sokka’s chin, face hidden against his neck and collarbone, and Sokka can feel his soft warm breath against his skin. Their legs are thoroughly tangled together, bare feet touching softly, comfortably. One of Zuko’s toned arms is hugging Sokka’s midsection tightly, clinging. And Sokka had apparently clung to him right back as they slept, the arm under Zuko resting on his back and the other draped over his shoulder, as if pulling him closer.

Sokka doesn’t think they could _get_ any closer.

He feels his heart speed up in his chest. Okay. Okay. Shit. No big deal, he’s just cuddling with Zuko. Totally normal and okay and platonic. Right?

He’s cuddling with Zuko — _Zuko_ , his painfully attractive copilot, who Sokka definitely _doesn’t_ wonder what it would be like to kiss, at all. None of those thoughts whatsoever. And now they’re here, just— tangled together in bed—

No. Not _in bed._ In _a_ bed. It’s different. The second one implies a piece of furniture, while the first one implies—

 _Fuck_. Okay.

The truth is, Sokka is just so damn _comfortable_ right now, with Zuko’s warm weight on top of him, with Zuko surrounding him. One of his arms is falling asleep, and yet the thought of moving it from its place on his partner’s back seems outrageous, _wrong._ Like it simply _belongs_ there. He becomes hyperaware of their legs then, and how they intertwine, Sokka’s bare skin against the soft fabric of Zuko’s pajama pants, and the weight and the firmness of the muscle underneath. The pressure of Zuko’s hold on him, the way his arm circles his ribcage so firmly, so _securely_ , feels strangely reassuring, anchoring.

It feels— _perfect_ , for lack of a better word. Sokka doesn’t want it to end.

But, like all good things, it does, anyway.

He instantly feels it the moment Zuko wakes up. Not telepathically, but by the way his body tenses up on top of him. Sokka holds his breath, but Zuko doesn’t move right away, just lies there for a moment, rigid and frozen. He’s clearly panicking, and Sokka cringes internally.

Zuko finally moves, suddenly pushing his torso off of Sokka’s to look at him, stricken and wide-eyed, blushing bright red — the reddest Sokka has seen him turn so far.

“Shit. _Shit_ , I’m so sorry,” he says frantically, voice even raspier than normal. He scrambles off of Sokka and the bed as quickly as he can, nearly tripping on his own feet. “I didn’t mean to— Um. Shit. I should have just gone back to the top bunk.”

Oh. Cool. So he hated it.

“Hey, no, it’s cool,” Sokka says with a forced smile, lifting his torso to rest on his elbows, reaching out to turn the lights on. His own voice sounds strained. “I mean, what’s a little cuddling between partners, right? No big deal,” he says with a shrug, still smiling. He hopes he sounds convincing. “Plus we were both pretty out of it so, uh, I don’t think... Either of us can really be held responsible for our actions, especially in our sleep. If that makes sense.”

Zuko scratches his head nervously, still very flustered. “Right.”

He has a serious case of bedhead right now. Sokka wants to run his hands through it, to fix it or mess it up more.

“How are you feeling, by the way?” he asks instead, resorting to his tried-and-true method of distraction from unwanted thoughts, which is talking.

“Um, better,” Zuko replies, crossing his arms uncomfortably and looking down at the floor. “It’s not happening anymore. The ghost drifting.”

“Yeah, I don’t feel it anymore, either.” Sokka moves to sit on the edge of his bed so he can see Zuko better, see if there's still any trace of the hangover on his face. It never hurts to be cautious. “I think we should still go to Medical, though, get our brains checked. Just in case.”

“Yeah, makes sense,” he says quietly, biting his lip. There’s a tension in his shoulders that makes him look like he’s about to bolt out of the room any second. “I, um. I gotta— I should go back— Uh. My quarters.”

Zuko can’t wait to leave. Sokka really messed up this time, didn’t he. Shit.

He quickly stands up from the bed, taking a few awkward, uncertain steps towards Zuko. “Right, of course! You should— You should do that.”

Zuko’s not looking at him. He looks extremely uncomfortable. “Thanks. For letting me stay. Sorry that I...”

Sokka frowns. “Yeah, don’t mention it. I needed you here too, remember?” He crosses his arms too, mirroring his partner, looking at him with tentative concern. “Are you sure you’re good, though? Did you manage to sleep okay, or...?”

Zuko’s blush comes back full force. He’s still not looking at Sokka. “Yeah,” he says, and it comes out hoarse and raw. He clears his throat. “I slept fine. Did I... Did I disturb your sleep with my...”

_Presence? Brain waves? Extremely cozy embrace?_

Sokka scratches the back of his neck. “No, actually, I, uh. I slept really well,” he confesses, hoping that’s not the wrong thing to say. “Had some dreams, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you had them too.”

Zuko nods, but doesn’t say anything. There’s an awkward pause, so uncomfortable and tense that it seems to stretch forever. They just stand there in front of each other, Sokka looking at Zuko and Zuko looking anywhere else.

“Cool, um. I’m gonna...”

“Right, yeah. Go do your thing, man,” Sokka says, uncrossing his arms and stepping aside and away from him. “I’ll, um, I’ll see you later, then?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Cool.”

Sokka watches Zuko leave, his head bowed, closing the door quietly behind him. _Well,_ he thinks, running a hand through his hair. _That went well._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof 😬
> 
> the ppcd putting mr. ptsd and dissociation man together in the same jaeger: this cannot go wrong! 👍  
> (it's cool though, because now we got, uhh... *checks clipboard* captain adhd, should balance it out, right?)
> 
> full lyric for the title is _‘have we fucked ourselves over? / making our worlds so close / your skin to my bone’_. the song is also pretty much the thesis of drift compatible romance, i mean: _‘if i see you when i look in my own eyes / how could i ever despise myself again’_ :’)  
> i had way too many options for titles for this chapter, and way too many songs, so here’s a few: [‘eight’ by sleeping at last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPS9e-sCeko); [‘where i end and you begin’ by radiohead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyTY6Z-Fqzw); [‘basic space’ by the xx](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBhBO2JNpXg)

**Author's Note:**

>  **recommended listening:** [the entire pacific rim soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLogKnAa0QO-8ki_rlRwMgtihrlP-Lye4H)  
> [ **glossary** ]
> 
>  **Kaiju** : giant and powerful alien monsters from another dimension that began attacking Earth in August 2013, emerging from the Breach. Kaiju vary in size, shape and abilities, creating the need for a categorization scale, ranging from category I to V.  
>  **Jaegers** : equally giant robots built by humanity as a way to combat the Kaiju. Each Jaeger is unique in terms of weapons, design, strengths, etc, and is operated by two trained pilots as its crew.  
>  **PPDC** : stands for Pan Pacific Defense Corps, the organization in charge of the Jaeger Program.  
>  **The drift** : the technology that allows pilots to connect with and operate Jaegers, through a neural link. It takes two pilots to pilot a Jaeger, due to the heavy strain the neural load puts on the brain. This means the two pilots become mentally linked during operation of the Jaeger, ensuring synchronicity of movement and strategy. When pilots drift, their consciousnesses meld with each other, allowing for a transfer of memories, feelings and thoughts.   
> **The Breach** : the inter-dimensional portal that connects earth to the Anteverse, the Kaiju universe. It is located in a fissure at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.  
>  **Kaiju Blue** : the toxic agent present in Kaiju blood, highly poisonous to all life on Earth. When Kaiju are killed or injured, their blood contaminates the surrounding environment, vaporizing as it decomposes. Being exposed to or inhaling Kaiju Blue is often deadly.   
> **Shatterdome** : PPDC headquarters, facilities akin to large hangars, from where Jaegers are deployed into battle. There are several Shatterdomes, located in strategic places around the Pacific Ocean in order to isolate the Breach and keep emerging Kaiju from reaching the coast. Shatterdomes also house pilots, engineers, scientists and officers.  
>  **Conn-Pod** : the cockpit and control center of a Jaeger, usually positioned as the head of its humanoid body. From there, pilots can control the Jaeger’s movements and utilize its weaponry.  
>  **LOCCENT** : Local Command Center / Mission Control. Located inside the Shatterdome. Responsible for monitoring deployment and advising pilots during battle. LOCCENT keeps watch on pilots’ vital signs, Kaiju signature and movement, categorization (size, toxicity, etc), and any other relevant information.  
>  **Jaeger Tech / J-Tech** : the technology department of the PPDC, responsible for the development, maintenance and deployment of Jaegers.  
>  **Kaiju Science / K-Sci** : the research department of the PPDC, focused on studying the Kaiju, from their biology to their behavior, and the Breach they emerge from.
> 
> also, if anyone feels like it, they can watch the [movie’s intro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExS4BFzD5TM), it’s only 4 minutes long and sets up the worldbuilding pretty effectively.


End file.
